Filed under: Life — at 4:49 pm by jim

Almost every Sunday for the past couple of months, I’ve been getting together with a bunch of old college friends to play in a kickball league.  Our team, the Kickin’ Kids, finished the season with a 5-3 record.  That’s actually four more wins than we had during the fall season!  Our regular season play was also decent enough to get us seeded 6th out of the 16 teams for the post-season tournament.

We figured that we had a pretty good shot against our opponent in the first round of the tourney… we had played them in our 5th game of the regular season.  Although we lost to them that day, it was only by one run… plus we had a lot of momentum because of the three consecutive wins we had following that loss.

The game was pretty intense… for the post-season, games are shortened from 7 innings down to 5 innings, in order to get all 5 tournament rounds played in one day.  This makes each scoring opportunity just a little bit more pressing.

My first at-bat of the game came during the third inning… there was one out, and no men on base.  I considered trying to get a solid kick past the outfielders… however, they had been playing some really strong defense that day, so it was more likely that it would be caught for an out.  Instead, I bunted the ball in order to get an easy base hit.

The kicker after me was a girl, so I knew she wasn’t going to do much with her at-bat.  Sure enough, she kicked a grounder right to the second baseman.  By the time that he had fielded it, I was already past him and to the base.  He went for an easy out at first, and this gave me a chance to go for third.  I made it in plenty of time, and they instead tossed the ball to home plate to prevent me from trying to get the run.

So at this point, there’s two outs with me on third base… the next kicker sent a bunt straight down the third base line.  The third baseman made a smart play by fielding it and holding it there, to prevent me from going for home.

So finally with two outs and men on first and third, one of our power kickers came to the plate.  He liked the look of the first pitch, so he took it and sent it deep to right field… however, their right fielder was in position and made an easy catch to end the inning.

The rest of the game flew by, and at the end of the fifth inning, the score was tied 3-3.  The game was now going into overtime, but we maintained our calm… we were holding our own, so we figured we could stop the other team’s offense one last time.  Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case.  The other team scored 5 runs in the top of the inning, so the pressure was suddenly on us to produce.

Our first two batters didn’t fare so well.  They both kicked into easy outs, leaving us with two outs, but still needing 6 runs to win the game.  Things picked up after that though… first one runner got on base… then another… and then another.  We had runners on 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.  The next batter HAD to produce, or else this was the end of our entire kickball season.  Who was that next batter?

Me… talk about a lot of pressure all on one man’s shoulders.  For the first two pitches, I couldn’t get my timing right.  I was behind the ball both times, so I let them roll by for strikes.  Two outs and two strikes… I knew that even if the next pitch wasn’t quite right, I had to kick it, just to be sure that I wasn’t caught looking for the last out of the season.

So on that third pitch, I really jumped on it.  I made good solid contact, and the ball was headed down the left-field line with some good speed.  It flew just over the third baseman’s reach and landed just barely fair!  Two of our runners scored, and we still had runners on first and second base.  This game was getting close!

Unfortunately, the batter after me failed to produce again… she gave it a pretty good kick, but it was only a pop-up to the first baseman.  Game Over, 10-7.

So that’s the end of the Spring 2007 edition of the Kickin’ Kids… I’m not sure when the next season will begin, but I’m already looking forward to it.  Supposedly our current team is going to split up into two separate teams, because we already have a pretty big roster, and we have a few more people that want to join us for next time.  I’m not sure how we’ll decide to split up… maybe we’ll do it like in elementary school, where two captains each pick a player one-at-a-time.  I’d be cool with that, as long as I’m not picked last.