TX Children's Hospital Charity Softball Tournament

It’s been a busy 2 weeks for me. First it was the MS150 and then just last week was the TX Children’s Hospital Charity Softball Tournament sponsored by my company and a couple of other big companies. There were 30+ teams that participated in this 2 day tournament. Every team was required to play 3 games on Saturday and those with winning records would play in an elimination game. The winning team would then be invited back to play in a double-elimination style tournament on Sunday.
Needless to say, my team was invited back to play on Sunday. But it wasn’t an easy road that we traveled on day one. We played at the Big League Field of Dreams near NASA. The park had 6 replica NBL stadiums. There was Yankees Stadium, Fenway Park, Crosley Field, Wrigley Field and two others that I didn’t know. I was excited when I learned that our first game would be on Yankees Stadium. But the excitement was short-live cuz we lost the game in extra innings by 3 runs to the Pappas team. I don’t remember the team we played next, but we got redemption in our second game in Fenway Park. We played a shutout game, winning 22-0. That poor team that had to play us…
Our third game was a bit more challenging, but we managed to win (I think) 18-11. The umpire was a bitch though. He made so many bad calls against our team. The same umpire reffed our next game…the elimination round. It was quite a nailbitter as this game went into extra innings. Mary and I almost had a collision out there on right field. It was my fault but the ball was coming her way and I thought that she would back out but she didn’t and by the time I saw her…I was so worried that the ball would fall on her head that I reached out with my glove to protect her head then to go for the ball. The cost us a lil, but I didn’t care as long as she didn’t get hurt. It would be quite a stinger if that ball had landed on her head. Well…back to the game…we won the game when Eric popped fly to the outfield and as soon as the catch was made, I came storming in from 3rd base to win the game. That was awesome!
So this brings us to day 2…Sunday. It was quite an experience. We played 4 games straight in a row without a break. It was one game right after another. It certainly took a toll on us since we were all so sore from the day earlier. Well, we won our first game pretty easily. Lost the second one pretty bad. Then we moved to Yankees Stadium for game 3 and 4. Well, we won game 3, but it wasn’t without controversy. Eric hit a ball towards first base and as he was approaching the bag, their first base girl decided that she was going to try to tag him out and when that happened, they ended up colliding with each other. It was inevitable. It was like head on collision. Both players were going at full speed so nobody could have stopped on a dime, but the girl overstepped the bag and put herself in harms way. Well...she took a pretty bad hit to the jaw. Medics were called in to check her out. During that…their 3rd base player said something to my coach and a confrontation started. He accused Eric of running into the girl on purpose. That was just the most ridiculous thing. We would purposely do that. After all…it was a charity game. So with that confrontation, the entire bench for both teams came onto the field. There was more nasty accusation by the other team believing that Eric ran her over on purpose. Well…after that dispute was over…another one occurred when Paul, my teammate, was going from 1st to 2nd and their 2nd baseman stepped in front of his line of path (which is illegal to do in softball…by the way) so Paul slide into second knocking the ball from the guy. Paul was safe, but as they both got up…the other guy got into Paul’s face…said some stuff (probably cuz he was made that Paul knocked the ball out from his glove)…and that started another confrontation when Paul quickly retaliated with some words of his own. Again…both benches came out and the umpire quickly called for both coaches. Another word from either team would be ejected. I quickly ran over to Paul to calm him down cuz his mouth was still going. He settled down and the game continued…but by this time…it was more than just a charity game. It was for bragging rights cuz the loser of this game was done for the tournament. Well, it went into extra innings once again and bases were loaded when I came up to bat. It was 1 pitch…a strike and I’m out…a ball and I walk. So I had to play it smart. I saw the pitch and it didn’t look good so I let it go and it fell just short of the home plate so I walked allowing the winning run to come in for our team…winning the game. How awesome was that…winning bat at Yankees Stadium! That was awesome! Our 4th game continued there but the results were different. Again we met the Pappas team and again we lost, but this time it was bad. I think the team was just so dead by this time cuz we made too many mental errors. We couldn’t catch the ball if it were handed to us. And we couldn’t hit the ball if it were still. We still made a valiant effort and came as close as 3 runs, but that was it. They blew us away. So we were now done for the tournament as we lost our 2nd game. To our surprise…we still managed to come in 4th and got a trophy presentation from the manager of our product center. That was pretty cool. We were the only team to rank from the many that represented our company. So now we have bragging rights…hahaha.
The tournament gave us a pretty good insight to the team we will have for the season coming up. I can’t wait. I think this will be the year we finally win that eluding championship in the company’s tournament that we have been chasing for several years now.