Baseball Continues in 2009

Daniel recently tried out and made the Mattoon Middle School baseball team. This is quite an honor and accompishment for him as this is a team comprised of both 7th and 8th graders. Of the 18 members of the team, 7 of them are 7th graders.

They had their first games this past Saturday, August 15, 2009, in a tournament held in Morton, IL. The boys won their first game before dropping their final two.

Daniel was the designated hitter in the second game, going 0 for 2. His first bat he grounded out on a hard hit ball to the third baseman. Daniel almost was able to beat it out, which was really surprising, because he did hit the ball very hard and the third baseman fielded the ball cleanly before firing it to first. In Daniel's second at bat he ended up striking out with runners at first and third and 2 outs. This was unfortunate because both the first and third strikes were called strikes, and they appeared to be inside. Not only that, Daniel hit a very long foul ball for strike 2 in this at bat that would have been over the fence and fair for a 3 run home run at the Cal Ripken Baseball Field in Mattoon he played at this summer. But this game was being played on a much larger Pony League field. The Cal Ripken field has a left field foul pole sitting at 210 feet, whereas the dimensions down left field on this Pony League field were 300 feet.

Daniel started in right field in the third and final game (he did not bat in this game), and he made what turned out to be the best defensive gem of the day. With the game still on the line and runners at second and third with 2 outs, the batter hit a sinking line drive into right center field. Daniel came running int to make a spectacular sliding catch of the ball to end the inning, and keep his team in the ball game. What made it even better was the fact that he was looking directly into the sun while he tracked the ball down. What made it even better than that was that his older brother, Doug, had just arrived at the game in time to see Daniel make that catch! You should have seen the grin on Daniel's face when he learned that Doug got to see the catch of the day!

Damien tried out for next year's traveling Hit Men 11 and under baseball team yesterday afternoon. Damien will turn 11 in October, so he is getting to the age now where he realizes that money really does not grow on trees or magically appear in one's bank account. There is a cost to being on these traveling teams, so Damien offered not to try out for the team to save us some money. I asked him if he wanted to play or not, and he said he did, so I told him don't worry about it, go on and and try out, if that is what you want to do. So he and 24 other boys tried out for the 12 slots available for the team's roster for next season. Younger brother Donovan's tryout session for the 9 and under team is this coming Sunday, August 23.