* I will have to go back and put things in by date before this but I wanted to get this down for Bay before I forgot.
Baylor’s 11U travel baseball team was invited (based on season performance) to play in the Travel Ball Select National Championship. We headed down to East Cobb, Georgia near Atlanta this past weekend to “lay it all on the line”. The top 24 teams in the nation were invited to play and teams came from all over the United States. I was really in awe at the determination and dedication of all of these teams from around the US. Sure going to East Cobb, Georgia was a fun trip for us, but it was a serious investment for those from Texas, California, Miami, Arizona, and Michigan.
On Saturday we started the tournament playing against the Evoshield Canes from North Carolina. The Canes were ranked (before the tourney) in the top 5 Nationally. Our kids started off a little intimidated and nervous but showed up with a great performance and pulled off their first victory 4 to 2. Baylor played great in the field and he was hurting BAD. In years past we learned what kind of things he could eat/not eat before games because he inherited his mother’s sensitive stomach, but he had never encountered Chipotle sauce and evidentially Chipotle hangs around with you for a while. During the game, he was feeling the effects from dinner the night before. It was almost debilitating for him his stomach hurt so bad, but he pushed through and Brent and I enjoyed a lovely ride back to the hotel with screams and lovely odors as he rolled around in the back seat. Thankfully we had a few hours before we were to head to game 2. For the second game, we had the pleasure of playing at the fields in East Cobb. These fields are the “mecca” of baseball fields. You could almost hear whatever music baseball players in heaven hear when you walked through the entrance and into the park. When I asked Bay about his favorite memory for the weekend it was “the feeling I had when I first walked in and saw that ball park.” Not many people get to experience what he experienced and it was a little boy’s dream come true. We made our way to the field and found ourselves against a scrappy team from Arizona. We held our own with the Arizona Sandlot but fell short with a 4 to 0 loss. I know in my heart that we could absolutely have beaten that team, we just could not get our bats going and had a few early errors that we could not recover from. Their 4 runs came from walks, one hit, and a bunt. Sandlot went on to be in the top 5 for the tournament.
Day 2, Saturday, proved to be a little more difficult for the Legends. First up was Team Mizuno from Texas. Team Mizuno really hit the ball and we did not. I really think the magnitude of the tournament and the level of the teams and players got into the heads of our boys a little. You could tell that they really wanted it, but at the same time the confidence that they typically carry seemed to be lost somewhere between the dugout and the field. Mizuno ended the game on a trick play (that really upset me because even though it is baseball it just seemed cheap… we came to PLAY). There was a runner on first and third, the kid on first took off to steal second and very dramatically fell halfway to second. It threw our kids off and they threw for the out at second while the guy on third sped home for the game ending run. Mizuno beat us 10 to 2.
Our second game of the day left me the most surprised. We were pitted against Banditos Black out of Texas. Right at game time I was sending a few e-mail out from my phone to check on the kids. I hear some cheering from the parents and look up to see this…
Baylor can pitch, he knows what to do, he knows how to hit his mark. BUT, Baylor has pitched to one player during a game this entire year. I was blown away at the decision to put him on the mound. Once I got my mouth up off the bottom of the bleachers, I yelled and screamed and videoed like any proud momma would. In his first inning the first batter got a base hit, struck out the second batter, walked the third, fourth grounded out to second, and the fifth struck out. PROUD!!! The second inning proved a little more difficult as they figured out where to hit him and 4 runs were scored when he was pulled. Not bad for a “I’ve never pitched in a game before but just pitched in the National Championship” kid.We let the Banditos get ahead by 6 runs before we decided to turn on our baseball. Once our bats started going and our pitcher started sending them back to the dugout one at a time we managed our way back up to a 6 to 5 score. The game would have totally been different if not for a bad call by the umpire that involved a ball hit near the foul line that was obviously fair, 2 runs scored (we were the home team so the game would have ended) before he even got FOUL out of his mouth. The Banditos went on to win 6-5 and the team went on to play in the top 4 of the Championship Bracket.
It is also funny to note that our coaches overheard the umpire asking the first baseman the name of the close out pitcher for his record keeping and the first baseman said “I have no clue.”. The rules state that a team playing in this tourney had to play 60% of the games together as a team. They must have picked up that stud pitcher at the Wal-Mart, cause the team sure did not know him. We found that our team was a rare breed being all from the same general area.
The loss to Mizuno placed us in the lower bracket for the tournament. The top 12 went on to the Championship round and the bottom 12 went to the Challenger cup. We had really hoped that against all odds we would be able to pull out into the Championship round, but seeing the level of competition we were still so proud of our boys.
Monday began the championship play. On deck first were the Atlanta Blue Jays. They came out swinging and got ahead 4 to 0 in the first inning but we were able to answer that and stay strong on the defense to pull out a 12 to 8 win to move on.
The second game was against the PSA Worth Sox Red out of Mississippi. We had seen this team before in Southaven and in Baylor’s words “they killed us”. We were hoping for chance to prove ourselves. PSA is a team from the middle of Mississippi but has players on their team from as far away as Panama City Beach, FL (that is the kind of teams we were playing). Their first baseman was from Jackson, TN. With great pitching we managed to stay ahead the entire game (even with a brief rain delay and a ball to the helmet of our pitcher while batting). We beat PSA 4 to 2.
The win against PSA put us in the semi-finals for the challenger bracket against So Cal United. So Cal was a great team who came out swinging from the very first pitch. In the second inning they found the holes and hit 4 doubles in a row taking a big lead that we were never able to recover from. So Cal beat us 9 to 1 to move on and send us home.
All in all it was a FABULOUS weekend, time spent with great kids who have great families. The Tennessee Legends were not given much of a chance in this big invite only tourney. A little no name, no sponsor team, from a no name town who came to prove that they could play some baseball with the best of them. People took notice, and I think we even picked up some fans along the way. People who saw in our kids what we see and people who know that baseball is a game where you never know which side that little round ball is going to fall on. You win some, you loose some it is all about the game.
