Very Long Championship Night

Hello everyone, this is Morry.

Evan's last baseball tournament of the season got reduced to a one-day tournament because of rain yesterday.  With a one-day tournament, he had to play two games.  The two teams with the best record played in the championship.  The games were schedule for 4:30 and 6.  The championship was scheduled for 7:30.

Since it was a late start, we took it easy in the morning.  Rachel wanted to go for a walk around Lady Bird Lake, but the boys refused.  Rachel and Lizzy went.  Rachel said much of the trail was underwater and she had to find ways to get around it.  They opened the dams so the lake (which is really a river) was flowing pretty fast so Lizzy couldn't go swimming in the lake.  When they got to the boat ramp, the water had gone completely up the boat ramp.  Rachel let Lizzy swim in that for a bit since it didn't have a current.

Evan and I left the house just before 3.  We found that the games were running nearly 45 minutes late.  The Bucs did not start out very well.  We scored just two runs in the first inning.  Evan struck out to end the first.  The other team, which was not very good, scored two in the bottom of the first.  The Bucs scored one in the top of the second.   Then the other team scored 2 in the bottom of the second to take a 4-3 lead , had bases loaded and no one out.   Evan came in to pitch.  He walked the first batter on some questionable calls to make the score 5-3.  Then he struck out the next batter and induced a pop up which led to a double play to end the inning.  The Bucs scored one in the top of the third.  Since they were trying to fit a lot of games into a short amount of time, no new inning could start after 65 minutes.  So Evan came out in the bottom of the third with about 6 minutes.  If he couldn't get 3 outs in 6 minutes, then the game would end and the Bucs would lose.  He got the last out with 43 seconds so we were able to start a new inning.  The Bucs ended up scoring 9 runs.  Evan pitched the bottom of the fourth quickly getting 3 outs for the win.

In the second game, the Bucs continued hitting well.  Evan crushed a ball in his first at bat.  I think it was his hardest and farthest ball he hit all season.  Unfortunately, the center fielder made a nice play and caught it in the air.  The Bucs went on to win that game.  Since we won both games, we made the championship game.

Since the first game started late and we scored 9 runs to end the game, we finished late too.  Then the second game ran late as well.  We didn't start the third game until after 8:45, a full hour and fifteen minutes late.  The Bucs jumped out to a 9-0 lead after the top of the first. Unfortunately, the other team scored 8 in the bottom of the first.  We answered with 5 runs in the top of the second and the other team only managed one run.  In the top of the third, we scored 4 runs to take an 18-9 lead.  Evan was 1-1 with two walks and three runs scored.  The other team scored 4 runs and had bases loaded with one out when we brought Evan in to close the game.  He quickly got ahead of the batter but the batter managed to hit a hard ground ball to the right side of second base.  Unfortunately, our centerfielder was playing on the left side and the ball rolled to the wall.  All three runs scored and the batter got to second.  At this point it was 18-16 with a man on second and one out.  Again, Evan got ahead of the next batter.  He induced a somewhat weak line drive to the first baseman for the second out.  Then the next batter hit a weak ground ball to second to end the game.  So Evan wound up with a win and a save in one day.  He was very excited.  The Bucs won the championship.

Rachel and Noah came for what they thought was the second game, but the first game hadn't finished.  Noah wanted to stay the whole time so they were there until the very end.

By the time we had the ceremony to get the rings and got back to the car an into it, it was 11pm.  The problem was we hadn't had dinner.  We figured they were up this late and the boys were pretty wired, so we went to Kerbey Lane for dinner.  The boys both ate well.

We are home now and the boys are already asleep.

Until next time...