Kickball

I was told that I needed to make a posting on the kickball tournament that I played in this past weekend. About a month and a half ago, my sister in law, Julie, asked me to sub on the kickball team that she and my brother, Jon, played on. I ended up making it to the remainder of their games and then it was decided to play in a kickball tournament in Richfield this past weekend. It rained that morning and when we showed up for our first game, it was a rather muddy field. But since my mother was a mudder and my father was a mudder, that makes me a mudder. In our first game, Leslie led off with a single. She was followed by Jon, who promptly kicked a home run. Then Michelle got a single, followed by Joe, who also kicked a home run. Next up was Kerry who got on base and then I walked to the plate. I think I popped out to the shortstop. Our first opponent wasn't very good. At the end of the 2nd inning we were up 19-0. The remainder of the game we all kicked with our opposite foot and won 23-0. Our next game started out the exact same way: single, home run, single home run, single and then I made an out again. Our second game we won 11-1, and the only reason they got a run is because I told the umpire to give them a run if they dove into the pond near the field where Dan had fouled the ball into. Going into our third game, the opponent had yet to get a runner to 3rd base. We won the third game 12-4 or something like that. There were only 7 teams in the tournament, and it was a double elimination tournament, so we now had to wait 3 hours to see who we played out of the losers bracket. We ended up replaying the second team that we beat. But at the end of the first inning it was 1-1, and our team was a bit nervous. And the game remained tied until the 4th or 5th inning where we started tacking on runs and eventually we ran away winning 10-1 or something like that to a team who's average age wasn't much more than half our average age.

A widely known strategy in kickball is kicking the ball down the 3rd base line and making the team in the field make that long throw across the diamond. Jon was playing 3rd and I don't know what he had for breakfast but he was on fire. I would say that in the first 3 games he was involved in 1/3 to 1/2 of the outs. There were at least 3 or 4 innings that day, where he made all of the outs by either catching a line drive or threw someone out. Now I would hate to give him any credit because I don't want his head to get to big, but he was the defensive MVP. Although I don't think he had the defensive play of the game. That honor would go to Joe who was playing left center. There was a line drive shot that got kicked in front of him and he had to play it on a bounce and from the outfield he threw a strike to Al on first. And even though the umpire called the runner safe, everyone knew that the runner was out.

Personally, I put on a rather poor exhibition on the diamond. I misjudged a ball that went over my head. And in 5 straight at bats I had 5 majestic flyouts to centerfield. And I was the only male on the team not to kick a home run.

Al, sorry but for whatever reason the pictures you sent me did not come through.