Baseball Blues

Bradley has been playing baseball for the last couple months. It is a PeeWee league that is just one step up from T-ball. The season started out pretty good, with practices every week in addition to the games. But after the first few weeks, things started to slowly degenerate. The coach was also coaching another team, so several practices were cancelled due to the other teams games, and with all this crazy wet weather, several games kept getting cancelled too.

There are 7 teams in the League that Bradley is in, and his team (The Marlins) is ranked last place. Some of the kids on the team were really enjoying the games, and had fun playing. But there were a few that just didn't care, and would sit down in the outfield, or throw dirt and rocks at each other. Bradley does pretty good for most games, and he really wants to be the pitcher. He actually got to pitch for a couple games and took it very seriously.

So we were on our way to his game last night, and it looked pretty stormy. There were a few sprinkles on the car windshield as we pulled in. We figured that some of the kids probably wouldn't show up because of the rain. Luckily there were enough that we could play. The game started out with the other team scoring 2 runs in the first 5 minutes of the game.

Bradley's team got up to bat and then scored 3 runs. It went like this for the first few innings, back and forth. There is a clock that displays how much time left in the game, and it only had 4 minutes left as we finished an inning. Bradley's team was ahead by one run, and we thought the game was going to be over. The other teams coach started arguing that he still had time on the clock and wanted to start one more inning. The Umpire agreed, and we started the longest inning that I have ever watched.

The other team got up to bat and the kids started getting walked. One after another run started going up on the scoreboard, and then it started raining pretty good. By the time the half of the inning was over, the other team had scored 6 runs, so we were down by 5. Most of the parents were standing up and had moved away from the bleachers, trying to find some cover from the rain. It looked like an impossible feat to get our lead back and win the game. Some of the kids didn't even want to go out and bat, because they didn't think it would do any good.

But one after another went up to the plate, and there were a couple hits, and some walks that started putting points on the board. After a while, we were only down by one run. In true baseball fashion with two outs, the last kid up to bat had a a full count, the bases were loaded. We needed one point to tie and probably go into another inning, but two points would win the game. And Bradley was on second base.

The kid who was at bat ended up hitting the ball in the infield and it was scooped up and thrown to first base. One point scored. While Bradley was heading to third base, the ball was overthrown to the first baseman.

So we had one run that just scored, tying up the game. As soon as the first baseman missed the ball, Bradley rounded third base and started running as fast as he could for home. Everyone on our team and in the bleachers was on their feet and yelling for Bradley to GO GO GO!!

While everyone on the other team was yelling for their first baseman to THROW THE BALL HOME! He got the ball recovered pretty quickly and threw it home just as Bradley crossed the plate. The Umpire called it SAFE!

Everyone was cheering for Bradley's team as they won the game. I overheard one of the kids telling his mom, "I wish we could have more games like this". It was a great end to the game, even if it went 45 minutes past the time and we were rained on for most of it. There is only one more game, so even if we win it, Bradley's team will probably still be ranked in last place. But hopefully the kids will be inspired by last nights win, and realize what is possible out there if they don't give up.