Our Pre-season marches on today with a past-season review! Today: 2004- Rookie Ball Red Sox. Our first year coaching, not a banner year by any means. In fact the season started off wierdly, one of our players Jaered, who at the start of the year did not really like to throw the ball, turned an unassisted triple play from 3rd base. Incredible right? Well, yes and no, here was the situation. Runners on 1st and 3rd, nobody out, there was a line drive hit, with the runners moving, right at Jaered, makes the catch (1 out), then touches 3rd to get the tag-up out (2 outs), then runs across the diamond to first and touches 1st base (3 outs), inning over, no harm done. Great individual play, that was by far the most spectatular play of the season, especially on the defensive standpoint. But the one thing I always like to stress is teamwork, now granted when you are dealing with 7-9 year olds and the ball being thrown across the diamond is not really a good thing to begin with, that play worked out really, really well, but I am a traditionalist. We worked on Jaered and he was the throwing the ball and making outs the rest of the year, so it was a great thing to happen.
That 2004 season was not great, we lost a lot of ball games, we were 4-12 through the regular season, not exactly a great year. But anything can happen in the playoffs. Amazingly we finished 3rd out of 4 teams that year, the 4th place team had 3 wins, and the other two teams had more than 8 wins apeice and dominated the league. We had a round robin playoff and somehow, the 4th place Yankees upended the 2nd place Athletics in the round robin, and all of a sudden heading into our final set of games all 4 teams were 1-1. Winners would move on to the finals. The Blue Jays had finished 2-1 with wins over us and the Yankees, meanwhile we had to face the Athletics. the 2nd place team. We were up 3 runs in the final inning, hey we were going to play for a championship after a poor season, all right, well now in Rookie Ball there is a safety circle around the pitching machine, well it was not chalked on the diamond all season long. So now here we go, in the bottom of the 6th with 1 out, we get a routine ground ball the pitcher fields it, throws it to first, and we are about to head to the championship game. Well not so fast, the Athletics coach comes out of the dugout and challenges the fact that our pitcher was in the circle, that was not drawn on the diamond. Now, normally the umpires make their call and leave it, not this time, the ump reversed his decision and put the runner on 1st, 1 out. The Athletics began a rally and won the game by a single run. Two days later we would lose to the Yankees in the consolation final.
What a tough way to lose in the first year, tomorrow 2005- Minor Blue Jays and one amazing game.
Countdown is on- Mass Practice- 5 days away!
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