Baseball is winding down

T-ball is over and PeeWee is going to be done this week. Jeremiah is so proud of his medal that he has worn it to bed. Jonathan's team has put on quite a show this week. They have won all three of their tournament games so far with two of them being come from behind wins. Monday night they started the final inning down two runs. They scored five to take the lead and then took the field. Since all the players on each team bat in every inning, it is nearly impossible to prevent a team from scoring. I haven't seen it happen at all this summer. But of course, in the bottom of the last inning our kids are getting outs all over the field: at second, third (at least three in a row came there), they got a force out at home on the next to last batter and caught the final ball put in play. End result was a three run lead that held up. The kids were jumping up and down and yelling. In reality the league doesn't care about keeping score, but believe me the kids know the score. They lost to this team early in the season, but the improvement that our kids have shown is amazing. Last night they were able to bat last in both games (it's determined by coin toss) and in the first game they built up such a lead that we didn't need to bat in the bottom of the last inning(time was a factor too since we had another game to play). In the second game it was another come from behind win. We started the bottom of that inning down three runs. The kids had another good inning at the plate. They had scored three runs and had runners on second and third when the last batter came to the plate. He had been having a rough night without a hit to this point in the second game. I don't even remember him getting a hit in the first game. Normally, he is one of our best hitters so he was due. I told him he just needed to make contact and not worry about getting another home run(he has four inside the park home runs already). He made good contact and the two runners scored. He was tagged out at the plate on a close play. The kids were going crazy. As coaches we are so happy for them. I can't believe how much they have learned and improved this summer. I wish we had a video to compare it with. It is fun to watch. We have stumbled onto a lineup that works really well for the kids. Jonathan is hitting in the middle and the extra runners ahead of him on base frequently gives him a chance to get on with a hit, even in the infield. Last night he had a couple of hits that would have been good even without the extra runners. He is really getting better and I think he has a lot of fun as well.

Baseball

Well, we finally got pictures from Jonathan's game tonight. I was the only coach there for our team and we were missing two players. Amelia was able to come and help keep order in the dugout for me. The other team only had 8 players, but we figured the kids would still have fun anyway. I got hit by a batted ball in the bottom of the second and the girl that was pitching to the other team got hit by one in the top of the third. It is pretty ironic, since I haven't seen a single pitcher hit by a ball in a game so far and it happened with both teams within an inning tonight. Anyway, here are the pictures of the pitcher with the rubber arm(at least my arm feels like rubber). How do you get one of those big league cold packs anyway? Also a shot of Jonathan at bat and in the field.
This is Jonathan at the plate.

This is Jonathan at second base in the field.

This is that wild pitcher. There were a couple of old guys in the stands tonight offering a ton of advice on how to pitch better. Needless to say the comments didn't help my arm feel any better. I need to be put on a pitch count or something. :)