The Youngest's fall baseball season is winding down, and we're entering our playoffs just as Major League Baseball's World Series begins. This is likely my last fall as a "baseball parent", something I've been doing for twenty years, something it's hard to imagine doing without. When I last drove a car without a dirty, smelly bat bag and a bucket of balls in the back, I still looked great in a bikini, which seems so long ago and is not very clear in my memory, given everything that's happened in the interim.
We've had a so-so season. Right now, we're 5-6, with our last regular season game to be played this evening. It doesn't count. In fact, none of this weekend's games "count" towards the standings, towards the seedings for the playoffs, except our game yesterday, which was a tie-breaker in the middle of the pack, sending the winner to the "B tier" and the loser to the "C tier" for the playoffs. Our league is run by two benevolent dictators with the help of a couple of others who have recently joined, pitching in with schedules and uniforms, but there's no doubt about who's in charge. Neither of them have sons playing in the league any longer. Their players aged out and headed to college (one to play D1 football) years ago, but they stayed, both of them bright lights of citizenship, volunteers. One of them is an attorney and the other a software consultant with a PhD in math. This last factor leads to elaborate and complicated playoff scenarios reminiscent of the BCS.
Two of the eleven teams in the Upper League (for boys who are either still in high school or are 15-18) were much better than the others, and they'll play their own best of three (the "A tier"). Those two teams are made up of players from traditional baseball powerhouse private schools, Marist and Lovett, so theirs will be some great games. Our tie-breaker was a nail-biter, with emotions running high, a whole bunch of trash talking by our opponents getting an uncharacteristically emotional response from our players (my son). The coaches asked for time, stopping play a couple of times to try to calm their players, and the umpires stopped the game once to talk to both coaches, who went back to their respective teams announcing that the next player to mouth off to the other team would be ejected, and the first team to have two players ejected, forfeits. That settled things a bit (18 year old boys can be, er, spirited), and I suggested to my really upset son that he speak with his play. He answered by throwing out three base runners trying to steal (he is a catcher) and, in the bottom of the sixth inning (we play seven), he came up to the plate, his team down 7-6, with one out and the bases loaded with runners. After getting two quick strikes and hitting a third pitch foul out of sight into the trees on the opposite side of the parking lot, he hit one square on the nose, a game winning grand slam high above the center field fence into the trees (it actually hit a tall pine and bounced back into the field of play). As he trotted around second base, he gave just the tiniest little wave (palm out, all fingers fully extended) to the center fielder who had been baiting him (by name) for the whole game. It was delicious. It could only have been better had it been a "walk off", but we actually went on to score another run and then held them in the top of the last inning for the win.
I hope the momentum will carry us into the playoffs. Momentum is such a strange thing. I've never liked being the team that has a bye, that gets time off after the regular season for doing well, coming in first, sweeping, because, in my anecdotal experience the result is a loss of momentum that costs more than what's gained by rested pitching arms. I suggested as much in a comment on someone's blog last week (I can't find it now) when the Detroit Tigers swept the American League Championship Series, without yet knowing whether the New York Mets or the St. Louis Cardinals would go on to win the National League Championship Series. That, of course, ended in the most heart-breaking of fashions, with the Cards enjoying the benefits of the last inning homer, leaving the exhausted and adrenaline filled New York crowd, stunned, distraught, finished. It seems the St. Louis team has carried that momentum into the World Series, surprising Detroit at home in Game 1, still playing above themselves, riding the emotions of their Game 7 win and rolling over the well rested Tigers.
While it's unnatural for me to root for the American League, I do not love St. Louis, so I will watch and we will see what happens. In the meantime, my son's team will play a game that doesn't count tonight and our playoffs (a double elimination tournament) will start on Tuesday. I hope the Tigers and the Cards go seven games and I hope our little team has a play off run. It can be a whole lot of fun. It is late October. The nights are crisp and the breezes blow the leaves in swirls. At this point in the season, at this point in my life as a fan and as a parent, as the days dwindle down, I can hope for one thing: more baseball.
Peace, out. ya'll.
No comments:
Post a Comment