The latest news

We'll start off with the big news, and then move on to the baseball update.

Thursday Jessie had an appointment with the eye doctor. The results, rather expected, are that Jessie needs glasses. She found some frames she really liked at Wal-Mart, for only $10. Of course, the lenses are rather more than that... They should be ready by Friday. I believe Jessie is looking forward to seeing how different things look when they're not all blurry.

We had Stake Conference yesterday. Jessie and Brennan sang in the Primary choir. They both did very well, and we were very proud of how well they sat there on the stand for two hours.

As far as baseball goes, we had two games last week. The first one was on Tuesday, at the Webster fields. Brennan played first base the entire game. Overall he did well, but he's working hard on getting better. In the first inning, there was a throw he missed, but he ran and got the ball and made a perfect throw to second to get the runner out trying to advance on the error. He almost made that same play again, later. He also got a hit his first time up, stole second, stole third, and then scored. Later in the game he got another hit, and scored again. I think he might have had a third hit, as well. He also fielded a grounder and ran the ball to first, as well as some other plays. Still, in the end our hitting wasn't there, and the other team was hitting very well, and the Phillies lost.

Friday was another late game, against the White Sox. In most of their games recently they were bunting a lot, so we had decided to play Brennan at third again, as he was the most aggressive at charging the bunts. That plan almost changed when our other first base man came and said he couldn't play because he'd hurt his leg, but we decided to play our regular catcher at first instead. Brennan led off the game with a hit, and later scored. The White Sox completely failed to bunt, although they did have one hit that amounted to a bunt...

Anyway, the game was back-and-forth. Brennan's second time up, coach gave him the signal for a drag bunt (one where he squares around as late as possible). Brennan still squared a bit sooner than we wanted, and his bunt ended up going just in front of the plate (he told me later that it actually bounced up and hit him on the chest, so it probably should have been called foul, but the umpires didn't see that), and the catcher was able to throw him out. The Phillies had two innings in a row where they held the White Sox without scoring--but in the middle had one like that ourselves as well. Brennan made two key outs in this period--one a hard grounder from their best hitter that he fielded and made a great throw to first, and the other a high pop up in the infield that he caught. I think in the fourth inning, we had two one with two outs. Our batter hit a hard grounder to second. The White Sox second baseman dove and stopped the ball. Even so, several of our players (like Brennan) would have beat the throw, because it took awhile for the second base man to get up and make the throw, but it was our slowest runner.

It came down to the top of the sixth inning, the Phillies down 12 - 10. Our first two hitters hit it hard, but were thrown out. This brought Brennan up to bat. He hit a hard grounder past the second base man (a different player than in the other inning) and to the fence, and Brennan was able to make it into a triple. The next batter got a hit, and Brennan scored to make it 12 - 11. Two more hits followed, although we weren't able to get a run in, leaving the bases loaded, two outs, one run down. (and I think more went on in this inning before Brennan came up, because I think five runs would have made it 13 - 12, so that we would have needed to hold them on defense, but I forget now). And once again, our slowest runner at the plate. But he can hit it hard, so we had a lot of hope. Unfortunately, he hit a soft grounder that started out foul, but then went fair right to the first base man. So, once again, we lost.

Two more games this week. I want to mention that Jessie has done a great job cheering and supporting Brennan and all his teammates, and Dee has really gone the extra mile in trying to get things going as well, including making pennants for all of the siblings to use in cheering for Friday's game.