The Thrill of Victory, the Agony of Defeat

Saturday was Opening Day at the Harold Patterson Sports Complex, which means we spent the greater part of the day either en route to or from the ballpark or actively engaged in watching Tyler play baseball and Darcy play softball.

Tyler was the starting pitcher in his game and I guess that scrimmage a couple of weeks ago wasn't such a waste of time because any nerves he might have felt in starting a new season seemed to have been completely under control Saturday. In the first inning he struck out the first two batters, gave up a single and then struck out the fourth batter. So far so good. He bats second in the order but the other team--oh, how sorry I felt for them--didn't have much in the way of pitchers so Tyler walked again. He has yet to get his bat on the ball this season (including the scrimmage).

The second inning went pretty much like the first except that he gave up two singles instead of one. Still, no runs scored so we were up 9-0 when I decided to take the other kids and finish getting the rest of Darcy's equipment before her game at 4:30. Then we had just a little over an hour at home before we turned around and headed right back where we came from.



Darcy's game, sadly, turned out a little differently. I am excited to say that she personally was awesome and hit the ball in her first (and only, as it turned out) at-bat, and boy did she hustle to first base, only to be called out. Rats! That was the agony of her game; I think her team would have had a fighting chance but by some cruel twist of fate, all the girls who got hits seemed to hit them right at the pitcher. Toward the end of the second inning the other team was already over the ten-run limit but the ump agreed to let each of our girls bat once. And there at the end, maybe the opposing pitcher's arm was just tired or something, but she gave up several hits and our girls actually scored two runs, but it wasn't enough to make a difference.

I was watching Darcy in the field, and the change in her body language gave me a pang in my heart. She started the game with such high hopes, but it really was just so painful (and believe me when I say I am not criticizing the other girls--I'm just explaining events) as our pitcher walked five girls in a row. Think about it--that's 20 pitches IF there are no fouls or strikes, and then there was all the chasing of balls that didn't make it back from the catcher to the pitcher, and . . . well, you can see where I'm going with this. It was L-O-N-G and B-O-R-I-N-G and you could see the girls wilting every time the ump called "Ball!" And the second inning was the same as the first so Darcy was very disappointed when the game was over. But she bounced back pretty quickly.

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I wrote most of the above entry on Saturday but it started getting late and we had a big Sunday ahead of us that sort of spilled over into today, and now we've had another ballgame! Seriously, all the innings start to blur after a while but suffice it to say that Tyler pitched the entire game tonight! He started off kind of amped up, like he couldn't slow himself down, but then he found his groove and he pitched an awesome game! He was throwing harder in the last inning than he was when he started the game! The opposing pitcher's grandpa was sitting in front of and he turned around and said, "Is that your boy?" Randy acknowledged that he was, and this look of awe came over his face and he said, "Boy, he's got an arm on him! He's amazing!" That's always cool for me to hear.