Baseball and rain

Baseball season continues, and everything else seems to revolve around it. Last week we were supposed to have games Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This week there was a game on Wednesday, and a game on Saturday.

Monday's game was rescheduled from a rainout earlier, and the end result was that Monday and Wednesday were both against the same team. Going into Monday's game, the Tigers were a game behind the A's (the opponent) for second place. Behind some somewhat streaky but overall good hitting and some stellar defense, the Tigers won both games with identical scores of 12 - 6 to move into second place. In the second game, Brennan got one of those "only in Little League" 2-RBI bunts.

Friday was very gloomy, and it kept not raining although it kept being supposed to. But finally, at around 5, the rain started coming down, and the game was canceled.

Saturday it was still very gloomy and a bit rainy. I went out early to get some sheet rock to repair the ceiling from the post-hurricane leak. Shortly after I got back, it really started to rain. And rain, and rain and rain. I've heard at one point we got nine inches of rain in one hour. And it rained for more than an hour. We had planned on doing a few things that afternoon, but we ended up putting them off because we didn't think going out in the storm was such a good idea.

Finally, it started to let up, so we decided to head out. We planned on going to a few places and then getting something to eat. We soon started passing a few cars in the middle of the road with blinkers on. Then we saw a long line at the intersection ahead. At this point Dee and I decided that we wouldn't try to go anywhere except to get something to eat. So we turned around. Then we turned to go toward where the places we were considering were. That was something of a mistake. Pretty soon we came to some rather flooded intersections. We gingerly made our way through them, and began trying to decide the best/shortest way to get back home, while still hopefully finding a place to get food. About an hour later, after nervously going through many more flooded intersections and passing numerous stranded cars, we had made it to Space Center Blvd (about 2 miles at most from where we had started). Here it seemed less flooded, and we took it towards home. Luckily there was a KFC near our house, so we did get to eat. And we learned to not go out so quickly after that kind of a storm.

Anyway, needless to say, none of the baseball games scheduled for Saturday happened, either. This led to a mad scurry of rescheduling games. Before Friday, actually, our Wednesday game this week had been rescheduled to Thursday. This was nice, because Wednesday Dee had a carnival planned for Young Women's, Jessie had Achievement Night, and I had a pack meeting. The Friday game got rescheduled to Tuesday. Then it got moved to Sunday. Then it ended up on Wednesday. Oh, and I had been scheduled to umpire the first game on that Friday, so I still had to umpire the first game on Wednesday. This led to a lot of complicated scheduling changes and adaptations to get Young Womens and Pack Meeting taken care of and Jessie to Achievement Night and then to the game.

Umpiring on Wednesday went well. I had to make two close calls at the end of the game at home plate, but I don't think they really changed the game, and both teams seemed OK with things. Brennan's game went well, and the Tigers won 12 - 5. Thursday it was obvious that the team was very tired. Neither team was hitting well, and the Tigers still had most of the usual defense, so it was a low-scoring game for quite a while. Brennan's first at-bat he got a hit, but then was out at second on a very close play on the next hit. His second at-bat he put down another of his trademark bunts, but was just thrown out at first (although Brennan insists that he was safe on both of these plays--and he may be right. But the umpire didn't see it that way). His third at-bat came with the Tigers up 8 - 2 (and with three runs in that inning), two outs and the bases loaded. Brennan proceeded to get his hardest hit this season, a hard grounder up the middle. The shortstop was able to get it, but not in time to make a play at any base. This time, there was no chance for Brennan, as the next batter hit a grounder that the shortstop got to one step away from second, forcing Brennan out. The defense struggled the next inning, but then closed out the game and the Tigers won 10 - 7 (or maybe 9 - 7).

The Tigers have now one 8 games in a row, and are 1/2 game out of first place. The game Saturday was with the first place team, but now it is being rescheduled because one of our players will be out of town and another has strep throat, leaving us with not enough players for the game. No doubt that will lead to further adjustments in the next week or so.