The Weekend That Was: Aug. 11th - 13th

Another weekend was had by one and all. Even though we all had our ups and downs, I consider it to be a very successful weekend, personally.

Since it was the Home Town's annual summer celebration, of course there was more softball to play. Unfortunately, we had to begin playing at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday -- which was completely too early, especially that I didn't get to bed until about 6 hours before that due to some drinking and playing NCAA Football 07 at Mike and Lacey's.

Just like the weekend before, our bats were completely dead -- we simply couldn't buy a base hit. We played a team during that 9:00 a.m. game that I consider to be weaker than us, but due to numerous pop-flies, we just couldn't get our runs. We lost our first game, sending us down to the loser's bracket.

Yours truly pitched the entire weekend. My pitching performance, in my opinion, was stellar (more on this later). My at-bats ... well, they could've been better. I simply did not hit the ball well. I managed to reach base a few times, but not as much as I had wanted to.

Throughout the day on Saturday, we were dealing with a strong wind blowing in from left field. Our line-up is stacked with our fair share of home run hitters, but we just couldn't get the distance. Later on through the day, we played two more games and won them both -- earning us the ever-elusive Sunday games.

Meanwhile in between games, we bean-bagged it up, drinking beer, and had a good time that was shared by all. After we had finished with the ball field, we bought some more off-sale and headed over at Mike and Lacey's. That's when disaster struck.

Things went along typically -- a nice group of people were over, socializing and so forth, until the thunder and lightning came, along with a nice rain. We all headed indoors to the garage, played a little darts, listened to a little music. Around 1:30 early Sunday morning, I was last to leave the garage. We were literally starting to fall asleep in our lawn chairs, thanks all in part to that lovely 9:00 a.m. game.

That night, Mike and Lacey both left their cars outside. When they awoke, there was one car missing -- Lacey's.

After some confusion, it was concluded that it had been stolen. Lacey accidentally left her keys in the car, along with her purse (which included everything: credit cards, Social Security number, etc.). A totally helpless feeling.

I'm thinking that the car couldn't have gotten far -- probably some loser drunk from uptown who got left at the bar and needed someway to get home. This person probably searched for vehicles all over town before he/she got to Mike and Lacey's and found one that suited his/her needs. Hopefully in the next couple of days, somebody will report a car on a field road or somewhere -- but man, what a joke. Who's that dumb? And to put the both of them through the hassle of making phone calls to the police and calling the insurance company, the credit card companies, and etc. to protect themselves.

On Sunday, the games were postponed a few hours due to the heavy rains that had drenched the area (got about 2 inches of rain). When the field was dry enough to play on, we played our first game to the best of our defensive capabilities. On top of that, I pitched the game of my life -- anything I threw was right-on "money." We ended up taking a pretty tough offensive team to extra innings (9 in all) and won on Mitch's two-run blast to left field.

Later that day, we finally lost our second game in another extra inning battle -- a game in which I gave up a walk-off home run. I was so pissed, because just before that we were talking about giving up an intentional walk. I threw one pitch -- it literally came right at him -- and he just turned on it and hit that sucker over 300 feet to left. I think my glove went farther than the ball. But again, we didn't help our own cause, since we only managed to put up 5 runs that whole game.

After it was said and done, we managed to pick up 4th place (out of 9 total teams). We fared better than we had last weekend, but we need to get those bats going! This up-coming weekend will end the Home Town's softball league this year with a city league tournament. In order for us to win it all -- we need the hits and the runs. It's been proven for the last couple of weeks that we've got some stellar D and some pretty good pitching (ha...!). I'm looking forward to the tournament -- hopefully we've got enough players.