Our season wrapped up last night as we won the league tournament for the upper division. Our church slow pitch softball league is divided into an upper division that is a bit more competitive and a lower division. Both profess to promote fellowship, sportsmanship and participation. Of the teams we played in the tournament, we were the only team that played women and high schoolers. Even though it’s a co-ed league, we were the only team in the upper division who had regularly played women. One is our regular second baseman and the other alternates at catcher and right field. We’ve also played other women during the season. As far as high schoolers, we played five regularly (one of these was also one of the women). It was just really fitting to beat teams that don’t (and probably wouldn’t) play anyone but men aged 20-35.

We had won the “winner’s bracket” last week on Thursday. Monday night, the first game was between teams to determine the winner of the “loser’s bracket”; the second game was to play us. We were demolished. The other team came out and scored 10 runs in the first inning and we never recovered; heck we didn’t score until the third inning. We ended up losing by 12 runs, but it wasn’t even that close. We were simply outplayed. That gave us our first loss in the tournament, so we had to play the same team again the next night. What a difference one day makes. The next night, instead of 10 runs in the first inning they only scored 3. We answered with 4 in the bottom of the first, and the game was afoot.

It was actually a fun game; the blowout games are never fun for me. The lead changed pretty much each half inning. I know a number of the players on the other team (JD, Chad, Kevin, Santos, Buddy, Doug) and we needled each other all night; complimenting each other on good plays and razzing on bad plays. It was all done in fun, at least on my part. I played shortstop, as I had all season, and made a number of plays. I committed one error on a hot liner hit at me that caught me on an “in-between” hop. I did make a nice double-play turn at second and ran down a couple of pop ups. Austinator (my nephew) played third and made a couple of very nice plays in the field. I also went 3-4 at the plate, scoring two runs and driving in four, including the tying run in extra innings where we eventually won.

All in all, I thought it was a very nice win. Our team has played all year with one thought in mind – to have fun. We didn’t have the best regular season record and were seeded fourth in the tournament. It was really nice to see all the folks on the team play well at tournament time and come through like they did. And the church really backs the team. There were church members there who do not have kids/spouses on the team; they just showed up for the fellowship. The only drawback to the entire night (and season) is that it isn’t my home church; my home church has lost membership recently and we don’t have enough to field a team. I play on a different church’s team thanks to Rick, who initially got me on the team. Still, that is a minor drawback as we all had a great time!