One, two, three strikes you're out

Those of you who are Facebook buddies already have heard part of this.  Or seen. lol.  My son KC is in a co-ed softball league this summer, playing for a Ft Wayne Derby Girls team.  They were, according to KC, supposed to be in the eighth and lowest level of the league, but somehow ended up in  the sixth level.  This means that, as far as I can tell, his is the one team that doesn't have at least a majority of players with matching uniforms, doesn't have a lot of players that haven't played before, and in all honesty, doesn't look like they could beat a family reunion pick-up team.  But he's a trooper and is giving his best, including having me give him some BP (batting practice) a couple weekends ago.  (He gave me a turn, too, and I hit the longest ball of my life off him!)

So anyway, I went along with camera in hand Sunday, and these are the results.

Here's the team, such as they are.  See what I mean about the "uniforms"?  KC is the ginger in the green shirt.

And here he is sans outer shirt, coaching first, the team's equivalent of "Maytag Repairman".

After an uneventful 1st inning, here he is at shortstop.

And here's error #1.

Here comes error #2.

And #3.

And here's where he made a great play and got an out at second.  I was a little excited and may have missed the actual shot.

Here comes his first at-bat...

And there it goes!  Base hit!

Later he rounds third...

...and scores!  I... may have missed this shot, too.

The sound of thunder began... we weren't so lucky as to get rained out.

KC was making an effort... and he was on his own most of the time.

He plays in an important league... we even had a flyover!

KC throws another runner out!

The first game ended when the other team got to 20 (actually it was a two-run hit) that closed things out at 21-2.

 Second game, KC moves to right field.  The dude in red was playing left, and he came up with the highlight of the day.  Much of left field was waterlogged, and in one of his many unsuccessful pursuits of a fly ball, he tried to hit the brakes and slid butt-first through the water.

Right field is boring.

But third base is dangerous.  That girl took a shot right in the shin.

Very, very boring.

In his second (and only other) at bat, he had a strike called on a ball outside.  So he decided that he must have to swing at anything, so he swung at crap and grounded weakly to first.  In his defense, the ump did suck.  In HIS defense, there's only one ump a game.

Oh boy!  A move to right!

Not much better there.

The second game ended 26-1.  It would not be an exaggeration to say every player made at minimum one screw up.  (For example, see where the girl in all black was playing third?  She was also playing there when the shortstop tried to nail a runner at third. (Note:  the 3rd base bag is where the dude in orange is standing.)  It would also be no exaggeration to say that our catcher was recovering from a broken leg, but instead of milking walks and getting a pinch runner, she'd get a feeble hit and get about three limping steps toward third before the ball was thrown to first for the out, whereupon she would curse like a sailor as if it was amazing.   Top it off, it was not an exaggeration that the girl running the team had so little clue on how to set a lineup that she had KC batting ninth, after our "sure-out" catcher.  He went to her after the game and said, "Don't ever bat me after Pinky again.  Ever."


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Now, to cheer you up, here's some other pics from this week's travels:

Here are some shots from last Monday, AKA the beginning of "A thunderstorm every evening for 8 straight days."


Next, Sunday walk- in the "rain forest"...

There's a new fungus...

This little guy was a ways in front of us when I spotted him.  He finally dove for his hole when we were about six feet away.  He ran right in front of Scrappy- who to no real surprise, was busy with his nose, and never knew he was there until 1.5 seconds after he disappeared into his den.