Monday, February 14, 2011

"Maybe you ought to practice that..."

What made me laugh, and caused the title of this posting, is that after we failed on a bunt attempt for strike 1 some guy in the stands (I presume from the other team) shouts out "Maybe you oughta practice that..."  Shout might be a strong word.  'Muttered loudly enough for everyone to hear' is probably a better way to put it.  The reason I had to laugh is because of the absurdity of the statement.  Bunting is an everyday part of our batting practice schedule.  In the fall we spend extended amounts of time working on each bunt scenario and require that 90% of our attempts be successful.  What it amounts to is that before we move on, we have to succeed on 180 of about 200 attempts...  And we do.  Almost every time.  Of course, there's really no reason to justify anything we do.  The 40 wins per year we've managed to average per yer speak more to that than anything I can blog about.  I think that's pretty solid, even if Johnny Baseball in the crowd finds it necessary to be a jackass when a kid trying (as hard as he can) to do a job fails.  Still, I find it amusing when the bleacher creatures just can't help but to show how foolish and ignorant they really are about the game and what goes into it. 

Without a doubt it was coming from a dad who is upset that things aren't going so well for little Johnny and he just couldn't help himself.  At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter because what goes on outside of the fences has nothing to do with the game, and if those guys really knew jack, they'd be in the sport, not watching it.  What gets under my skin though is when anyone makes light of the effort that our players (or anyone else's) pour into this game.  They work too hard and sacrifice too much for that crap.  Every player that has ever put on a Pirate uniform has worked too hard for that crap. 

Anyway...

We're 11 games into the season now, and I think we're right on the verge of where we need to be. We took 3 of 4 this past weekend against quality ballclubs, and our bats seemed to wake up a little. Mike O'Neal finally got a win on his record after throwing a great game against Georgia Perimeter Thursday. The offense managed to pound out 13 runs in the contest and looked more like the dangerous team we know we are.


Jeff State came out Friday with a good looking starting arm and kept us at bay for most of the game, but we got hot late and made a pretty good run... The only problem was that we threw the ball all over the ballpark and cost ourselves the game. 4 throwing errors, a fielding mistake, and a missed opportunity for some runs in the first innings sabotaged what would have been a good victory.

Fortunately, we put a pair of good games together yesterday to sweep ABAC in a doubleheader. Bryce Dial and Robert Shipman got us going with back-to-back homers, and we never really looked back. Martin Castro came on to throw a shutout in game two, and we played one of the more well-rounded games we've had this year.

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