Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Haven't updated over the last few weeks? You bet.

I have a lovely, wonderful, frequently screaming all night newborn baby at home. As hard as it might be to believe, somethings do take a priority over kickball...

We've gone 1-1 over the last two weeks. On 8/13 we lost to Redrum, 2-0. I wasn't at the game (driving back from a weekend visit to Tucson to see the in-laws, because I'd much rather be driving through a desert with a screaming baby than playing kickball), but reports I've heard from teammates range from "the game was tough" to "we played retarded" to "balls soup". I know that at least two our our players were thrown out trying for the first-to-third-on-a-single thing, while making two of the ugliest slides known to mankind. I'll let the offenders decide if they want to tell those stories themselves.

Last week was a complete turnaround. We played Smurfageddon, and I think you guys know the history between us. A friendly rivalry, and we were 2-1 against them all-time going in, but certainly a rivalry of some sort. And for whatever reason, everything "clicked" from the first inning, especially for our offense. All of the poor decisions on where to kick vanished. Everyone made good choices, even if it meant not doing what they normally do or even sacrificing themselves for the team. Thanks to that, we scored four runs in the first inning, and never really were threatened from there. (It helped that their pitcher walked three of our first four kickers - ouch.)

The final score was 10-3, but really I felt like it was 100-3. To see our offense go out against a good team and execute gives me a lot of hope for the rest of the season. I know that we apparently CAN "flip a switch" come playoff time, but a) that doesn't mean we WILL do that and b) I'd like to able to play to our level of ability in the regular season AND the playoffs - I don't think the two are mutually exclusive.

I think most people know the Vince Lombardi quote of "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game." I think every youth sports coach drilled that into our heads as kids to prove the value of sportsmanship. I think that's taking the quote all out of context. I think what Vince Lombardi meant was that your results aren't as important as playing at your highest level of ability - that's the "how you play the game" he was talking about. Winning or losing is sort of important to me, but I can handle losing if we played as good as we could, and another team still beats us. It happened to us in the semifinals in San Diego last year, and in the Championship Game against Wonderballz a few seasons ago. It happens sometimes. But losing because you didn't come close to your best effort as a team (or even winning in spite of it) sucks.

This week, we play the Valley Girls in a rematch of last season's Championship Game. As usual, it should be a very competitive, hard-fought game between two former bitter rivals who now have a lot of respect for each other. Plus, the "trade" of Tyler F. to their team for Spitz will certainly spice things up a bit.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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