Baseball's End

Does that title make you laugh? It makes me smirk just a little because we all know that baseball is NEVER over in the Ryder household. There's a whole summer of San Francisco Giants, after all!

We were "fortunate" this year that Smunch didn't make the traveling all-star team for his league. Sure, that would have been flattering, but he was getting so little playing time on the club team...and he got that same kind of time on the travel team last summer...that I wasn't keen on letting all our summer plans slide just for more baseball.

Instead, Smunch was chosen for the "In-House All Stars" team. The team was a mixture of Phillies and Marlins players, with one player from the Cubs and they played a single weekend tournament with two games on Saturday and two on Sunday.In a lot of ways, it was a fairly dismal affair for the team dubbed The Chillens". The games were long and although they were somewhat close in score, the Chillens lost every single one of them.

On the upside, Smunch played pretty well. He pitched well enough to get the attention of the coach...the head coach of the Marlins who had also coached the Mavericks.Smunch never pitched for the Mavericks, so the coach hadn't seen that much of him. He struck out a bunch and got some good coaching on how to pitch just a little better. He also got a few hits and I believe he even scored once.

It was a mind-numbing weekend, with Daddy largely unavailable due to scorekeeping duties and me roped into providing snack just because no one else volunteered to bring anything when the kids had back-to-back games right at lunchtime. Watermelon, yogurt, cheese sticks...and hot dogs provided by another family. It was pretty successful as snacks go.

And know what? The coach asked Smunch if he was planning to play Fall Ball (he already was) and said he was getting together a team and he'd like to have Smunch on it. Awesome. I have a feeling summer is going to feel mighty short before baseball season begins again!