Saturday, February 27, 2010

Season Opener

Our season opener started at 8:15pm last night. It was cold but bearable. We played the team that my son and another player played for last year (and I was the assistant coach). Sometimes in youth sports there is drama with parents and coaches which causes people to leave and start new teams. This is not one of those situations. We parted on great terms and as friends.

Now for the game...

Baseball has a way of rewarding the insignificant details of hustle if you look past the obvious highlights of hitting a home run or making a diving play at shortstop.

My high school coach would tell us "It's the little things that make you big" and "If you take care of the little things the little things will take care of themselves."

Last night one of my hitters was working a tough at bat. He didn't swing at a pretty good pitch early in the count and then with two strikes he swings at a high pitch out of the zone and fouled it off.

While he fought off a few more pitches the runner on 2nd takes off for third and steals the base safely.

No big deal, right?

The very next pitch the batter hits a ground ball just past the pitcher and the run scores with the hitter getting an RBI.

Due to the fact that the hitter remained composed during his at bat and the base runner was hustling we were able to turn an insignificant ground ball into a run.

Defensively you have to have heads up players that can do the little things (like catch and throw).

The other team crushed a ball to the center field fence. The center fielder throws to his cut off man but the throw to the plate is a little late but accurate.

Our catcher realizes that he is not going to get the out at the plate so he takes two steps up to cut the ball off and fires to third to get the out. Even though the other team scored a run, we did a nice job of catching and throwing which enabled us to get an out at third.

Both teams played well considering the cold temperatures and we came out on top last night. It was a great way to start the season

Today we have a game at 2:30pm the warmest part of the day!! If you can't tell I am ready for the cold temps to go away.

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