On the Hook for #4

Well, the fall season is upon us and there are high expections for the team. We have some former players back, plus a couple of new players, and the team is tired of losing and is looking to turn it around. It’s amazing what happens to the mindset of a team when the members have gone through a rough patch and don’t want to repeat it. There is a fresh attitude amongst the guys. We are practicing during the week and can’t wait for the games to start. Personally, I’m going through rehab on my knee after having mensicus surgery in July. But I’m just as pumped about the season as everyone else… almost like I’ve been given a second chance to get out there and give it all I have. I’ve never wanted to pitch so badly in my life. I want to help the team by carrying a little of the pitching load this fall.

What is #4? That would be the 4th championship for this team. It doesn’t get old and we have a long season ahead of us before we can officially add another title, but that will be our focus the entire season. We don’t have the pressure of going undefeated, since we have done that already, and the fall of 2009 was truly an incredible season. Being competitive and sticking together as a team will bring the results we expect, no matter the final outcome of the season. It will be a fun, exciting season and the quest begins on Sept 10.

The Perfect Season: 16 Reasons That It Shouldn’t Have Happened

There are some things that happen in this game that people think are easy. Sometimes, it’s not til you look back and review the stats and box scores that you realize what seemed relatively easy at the time was actually as improbable as it was nearly impossible.

The following list contains 16 reasons that the perfect 16-0 season in the fall of 2009 shouldn’t have been possible.

1. 8 Players showed up for the first game.

One may say that if you have a great team, you can overcome anything. While this may be true, when it comes to the first game of the season, you aren’t sure what you have when it comes to a team. You definitely don’t want to start with less than 9 players since you will be giving the other team an out every time the 9th batter is scheduled to bat. It is also a bad sign to players on the team if guys don’t care enough to show up: why should they care to give all their effort? This can carry over throughout the season as guys think they don’t need to show up.

2. Only 6 veteran players were on the team.

Usually the sign of a great team is one that has members who have played together for a long period of time. This was not the case for this team. Although 6 players is a good start, that still leaves 3 players just to field a team and you always need extras in case guys miss for whatever reason. I also realize that when you have new players, they aren’t always guaranteed to play the whole season and you’re not sure what you are getting from them. Going into any season, I always want to have as many guys as possible coming back who have played in previous seasons.

3. 10 new or 2nd year players.

This fact goes hand in hand with the previous one. Even the most talented players need time to adjust to new teammates. You never know how long that may take or how long it’s been since the new guys have played ball. I like to think that most new players enjoy being on the team, but there is always an adjustment period that can carry over into their play in the field. These new surroundings can take their toll an a team, not because we don’t all want to win, but because of being unsure what to expect from everyone.

4. Rodney wasn’t playing first base.

Rodney, the former shortstop, had grown into a very good defensive first baseman. El Gato, as I like to call him, pounces on everything hit his way. With him at first base, the other infielders know all they have to do is get the ball somewhere close to him and he will catch it. He is also aware of every situation and reminds players what needs to happen if the ball gets hit to them. Now we do have other players who can play first base, but this is when the newer or less experienced players come into the mix. I believe there is a huge mental boost when guys can trust each other. Just because there is a capable player in the field doesn’t mean that everyone is going to buy into it and trust them. Human nature, I suppose, is a bigger factor than one gives credit.

5. Ethan fractured his ankle.

It’s hard for me to talk about myself, but I’m one of the reasons the season could have turned out differently. In the first game of the season, I went 3 for 4 with 2 runs scored, 3 stolen bases, and 3 RBIs. I was so pumped by this great start and looked forward to playing the remainder of the season. Roughly a week after the first game, I missed a step while walking downstairs at work and fractured my ankle. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say there was no way I was going to be able to contribute to the team like I wanted. You would have to ask my teammates what they thought after they heard the news, but I would think they if you asked them at that time, that there was no way we were going to go undefeated.

6. Tanner had a breakout season.

Tanner has always been one of our better hitters, but before this season, he had never pitched more than 13 innings in a season and had a career ERA of 7.46. No one could predict he would have a breakout season in which he would pitch 30 innings, with a 5-0 record and a 2.33 ERA with 33 strikeouts. Without this production from Tanner, we could never have dreamed of winning all of our games. This doesn’t take away from what Matt does for the team, but we have come to expect outstanding seasons from him.

7. 2 pitchers threw over 96% of the 84 total innings pitched.

As previously stated, Tanner threw 30 innings during the fall season, and Matt ended up with 51 innings pitched. That means that 4 other pitchers combined for 3 innings pitched. It’s extremely rare that you can count on 2 pitchers, for the entire season, to throw the majority of innings for a team. Matt finished 9-0 with a 1.51 ERA and 80 strikeouts.

8. Gave weaker teams a chance.

It’s been said that you play up or down to your competition. Even in our down years, we have played well against good teams. The flipside of this is that when a team is good and plays a weaker team, it can sometimes play sloppy or think that it just has to show up to win. It’s easy for an outsider to say that if you have a great team, then all you have to do is show up in order to win. It’s not so simple, and that’s why you play the games on the field and not on paper.

9. Rookies played up the middle.

It has also been mentioned that you can’t win with rookies playing second base and shortstop. Those are 2 very important positions that normaly require getting to know each other before the two players can gel and perform their best. Steven and Matt were 2 new players to the team in 2009, and they contributed to the success of the team. Although they were young, and still trying to figure out their roles on the team, they played like veterans up the middle and provided solid defense during the season.

10. 7-11-1 record in the spring season.

We were coming off a disappointing spring season, with questions about whether we could score enough to be competitive. We gave up 30 more runs than we scored during the spring. No one thought that we could turn that around into scoring 135 more runs than we gave up in the fall. We scored 191 and surrendered only 56 runs in 16 games. Those are the kinds of numbers that every manager dreams of, but rarely comes true.

11. No one had done it before.

No matter what sport you are playing, it is almost impossible to go undefeated. There was only one other team in our league that had come close, and that team lost in the championship game to end the season 15-1. We knew that we had a good team and tried not to think about the record, but by halfway through the season, I think we knew it was possible. We were then on a mission, Mission 16W, to finish the season without a loss, and there was some pressure to get that done.

12. Saturday and weekday games.

We typically play games on Sundays, and most of my guys have off of work on that day. From past experience, we can run into problems when we have games on Saturday or anytime during the week. It’s just a matter of fact that when you play amateur baseball with guys who work for a living, work schedules will conflict with game schedules. 12 out of 16 games were played on days other than Sunday. I’ve never coached a team when I would have the same group of players show up game after game with so many games played on odd days during the week. When you don’t have consistency, you usually don’t win.

13. 6 games in 14 days (Oct 10-24); we weren’t built for depth.

Any league, other than an amateur league, has depth when it comes to the roster. Pitching rotations, late inning defensive substitutions, and a bullpen. We were lucky, at times, if we had 9 players show up for a game. This makes it difficult to play one game, much less 6 of them in a span of 14 days. That’s not a lot of rest for the pitchers, and for guys who don’t work out everyday, it can be tough for them as well. I would be satisfied with winning half of our games if we had to play so many in a short amount of time. I would tell the guys to do their best and good Lord willing, things would work out. Okay, so that’s taken from Bull Durham, but it’s very true. That’s a rough schedule, no matter who you are playing, or what kind of shape you are in at the time.

14. Double-header Sunday Oct 3, then a game Wednesday. No pitching after 2 complete games.

October 3rd, we had a double-header, and both of our pitchers threw complete games for the wins. With a game only 3 days later, I was thinking that we would put whoever we could find on the mound and hope for the best. Wednesday rolled around, and we headed to our game in Cedar Hill (the field that is farthest away from all of us). My guys showed up, one by one, and no one showed up for the other team. My guys started taking some batting practice and I waited with the umpires, who called the game after 15 minutes past the scheduled game time. We got a forfeit win and another key to our team going undefeated. It’s hard to rank the importance of each reason we went 16-0, but this forfeit maybe the biggest reason we were able to pull it off.

15. Pirates debuted a hard-throwing pitcher during the playoffs.

We had defeated the Pirates by a combined score of 47-20 during the regular season, so when the playoffs rolled around we expected to beat them without any problem. At the beginning of the playoff game against them, that wasn’t the case. They had a pitcher that we hadn’t seen before and had more velocity than we had seen in a long time. We made it through the first inning against him with 1 run. The second inning, no one scored, and then the Pirates tied the game in the top of the 3rd, 1-1. My guys were patient and realized that the pitcher was throwing hard but was also wild. We figured if we took pitches that we could wear him down and get a few runs against him – and hopefully we could play good enough defense to get a win. We scored 4 in the bottom of the 3rd to take a 5-1 lead. We followed that up with 4 in the 4th and 2 in the 5th to stretch the lead to 11-1 and ended up with a “10 run rule” victory.

16. It’s hard to beat your rivals 5 times in one season.

Amateur and professional teams alike find it hard to beat a team 5 straight times during a season. What makes that feat even more difficult is when those 5 victories are against your rival. In our case, that team was the Mustangs. We have always had good games against them that resulted in wins and losses. Anytime you face your rival, anything can happen. Ask the Red Sox and Yankees: they rarely play a game in under 4 hours, and either of them can win on any given day. The same holds true when we play the Mustangs. If you told me that we would win 3 out of 5 against them, I would be happy with that result. The same would hold true if we won 3 straight games against them. But winning 5 games against them in one season would almost require a miracle. Our first win against the Mustangs ended in a 9-0 score. The second was a 9-6 victory, which required us to come back from a 4-1 deficit. Game 3 was a 7-4 win, and Game 4 was a 5-0 shutout. Normally I would have been happy with all of those results, but I knew that we still had to play them one more time in order to finish the season the way we wanted to. November 15th, Championship game: time to play the Mustangs one last time to secure our place in amateur baseball history. They scored one run in the top of the 1st inning, and we answered with 3 runs of our own in the bottom half of the inning. The Mustangs scored one more in the top of the 2nd and we scored 1 in the bottom of the 2nd. So far, so good, but there were still 5 innings to go. We held them scoreless in the 3rd and 4th inning while we scored one in each of those innings to take a 6-2 lead. The Mustangs put one on the board in the top of the 5th to narrow the lead to 6-3. We didn’t score in the bottom of the 5th and held them in the top of the 6th. The bottom of the 6th came around, and we put up 5 runs to extend the lead to 11-3. Matt shut them down in the top of the 7th to complete the game and finish the season with a perfect 16-0 record. It took a team effort, from game 1 to game 16, in order to complete the season undefeated. We may never do this again, but man to man, we will always remember the season we accomplished Mission 16W.

Some Things You Can’t Prepare For

Last Sunday we had a game. Just like any other weekend during the season. We had our ups and downs, but never expected what happened in the bottom of the 6th inning. We got the first out of the inning on a fly ball to Kevin in right field. He then threw the ball to our second baseman Rett, who in turn threw it back to our pitcher, Wesley. I was in the dugout and noticed that the ball had gone past Wesley. I didn’t think much of it but then Tanner yelled, “He’s having a seizure!” I then looked toward the mound to notice that Wesley had collapsed and was on the ground shaking. We all ran out towards him feeling helpless. It is one of the scariest sights that I have ever witnessed. It seemed like he was shaking for about 5 minutes, even though it was probably only for a few seconds. A couple of people called 911 and Wesley’s parents ran onto the field. I’m glad they were there even though it is something that no parent would ever want to go through. The fire department and ambulance finally showed up and checked Wesley out. He was really out of it and kept wanting to get up and pitch again. That shows the fighting spirit of Wesley. He’s a great kid who just loves playing baseball and we are lucky to have him on our team. We’ve been through a lot as a team over the years, but nothing compares to this. We found out later that he was doing all right and is supposed to rest for at least a month. It will be nice to have him present at our next game, although I know he would rather be out there playing. We have a couple of things planned for him, to let him know how much we care.

Being Brought Back Down to Earth

This will be a post to say that one day you are on top and the next you are humbled, especially in the game of baseball. Defense was our downfall this weekend, but despite that, we had a chance to win. All I ask of my guys is to play the best they can and things will take care of themselves. I know that no one tries to make mistakes but it happens to all of us. I think that all of my guys would agree that we can do better and we also know that it’s a long season and we will have our ups and downs before the regular season is over. As long as we get on a roll towards the end of the season, I’m sure that all the guys will be confident in their abilities and we can go deep in the playoffs. Time will tell, but right now we are licking our wounds in preparation for next weekend’s game.

Late Inning Moves = 2nd Win of the Day

I wish I could say that I knew all along that it would work out the way that it did. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. I was running through a couple of scenarios in my head, and that started with making a pitching change. Wesley had pitched a fantastic game and I wanted him to finish it, but his pitch count was approaching 100. If we were later in the season or in the playoffs, I might have let him continue. I would have felt really bad if I let him continue and hurt himself, knowing that it was the second game of the season. That pitching change allowed me to make a few other defense changes and set the wheels in motion for the 7th inning. Kevin came in and did a good job, but gave up a couple of weak hits and the other team scored 2 runs. I told the team at the beginning of the day that all I asked for is that they play hard and do the best they can. There are several new players on the team and I was a bit concerned about team chemistry. What happened in the bottom of the 7th inning told me all that I needed to know about the 2011 version of the Hooks.

Kevin started the inning with a line drive single to centerfield. Geoff then drew a walk on 5 pitches. This was exactly what we needed to do to start a rally in our last at bat. Jake then hit a single to drive in Kevin. This gave me the opportunity to pinch run for Jake, in order to bring in a faster guy I had on the bench. That player was Rett, who played shortstop all day. Due up next was Steven. A couple of players mentioned that I should tell him to bunt the 2 runners over to 3rd and 2nd. At this point with no outs, it was probably a good idea, but I decided to let him swing away. He hit a ground ball to the shortstop, who could have turned a double play, but he bobbled it and was only able to get the runner out at 2nd base. That was not the ideal situation, but at least we still had the tying run at 3rd. Due up next was John, who is one of my new players this season. John hit a hard line drive to right field and Geoff scored easily. What happened next was very fortunate for us, even though without it I think we would have pulled the win anyway the way we were hitting. The right fielder misplayed the ball and that allowed Steven to come all the way around from first base to score the winning run. Guys were very excited that we were able to pull out the victory and we all congragulated each other. After we told the other team that it was a good game, I told my guys that it was a great TEAM win and that EVERYONE contributed to the wins. I couldn’t have asked for a better start to the season and I’m very proud of all the guys on the team. It’s going to be a long season but it started out picture perfect.

It’s Almost the Beginning of the Season

Friday night and the countdown clock on the team website is at 1 day, 12+ hours. I have a good idea of who will be there, but now I have to think about strategy and making sure everyone gets enough playing time. It’s early in the season, so I don’t want my pitchers to throw too many pitches. We have a double-header so this will give me a good look at a few guys on the hill. I’ll have 2 different lineups for the games and move the guys around the field for defense. The only thing that can ruin my plan is rain. There is a chance of it, but hopefully it will hold off so that we can play. My guys are so ready to get out there and play again. November, the last time we played, seems like forever ago. Well, I’ll keep thinking about what I’m going to do during the game and get some good rest so I’ll be ready to play this weekend.

Time Flies When You’re Sick

Okay, so that actually isn’t true, but this season is creeping up on me. I’ve been sick since last Wednesday with a nasty upper respiratory infection.
I placed orders for hats and jerseys and hope to have them by our first game. We have several new players and I think we will be just fine. It will take some time for us to get used to each other, but it’s a long season. The first part of the season is great for finding out what you have as a team; it gives you a great idea of how things will work when the playoffs come around. We’ll probably try to meet up sometime during this week as a “get to know you” session.

4 Weeks Until the First Game

February brings a few things to mind. Groundhog Day, League Fees are due, the roster needs a little tweaking, and the season is just around the corner.
Most of the guys on the team are pretty good about paying their fees on time. There are a few who need a little encouraging, but when push comes to shove they get the money to me. I have a few guys from the league Player Pool who I’ve been in contact with and hopefully they will make it out to practice this weekend. It can be very difficult in February to have a practice because you never know what the weather will be like or if the field will be playable. Things always seem to come together, though, and soon we will be on the field, playing ball, and having fun.

Oh Where, Oh Where Has My Bailey Gone

A call has been put out for our best player to come back and play with us in the spring. The guys on my team are trying to get Matt Bailey to come back from his hiatus by any means necessary. Including posts on Facebook with the cry of “We want Bailey.” My guys know the value of Matt and what he means to the team’s success. I even designed a t-shirt for the cause.

2011 Draft Pick

After about 2 and a half hours we came away with the player that we wanted in the tryouts. I was a little shocked at what some of the other teams thought were good players but I guess only time will tell if it works out for them. We got a great guy with a fantastic attitude who is ready to play and have fun while doing it. He will fit nicely with the team and be able to contribute right away.