Guest blogger :: Bill
At 8 a.m. Saturday Morning Rhys and I headed to the baseball fields to pick up the team uniforms for fall ball. Yes, we were supposed to have them 2 weeks ago, but that's another story. A few hours later we kicked the Muckdog season off with a big win. Rhys did a great job playing catcher for a couple of innings and left center field as well. In his first coach pitch outing he managed a couple of really good hits and put the ball in play in every at bat. I pitched and will likely get an ulcer from the stress.
Fast forward 24 hours and Rhys was playing in a select league tournament in Georgetown for the Belton Tigers. Wait ...
... let's back up a little bit.
I've got a friend at work (Chris) who coaches a Belton Select League team aptly named the Belton Tigers 2020(it's 8u Coach Pitch). He had mentioned a few months back that he was putting this team together and wondered if Rhys might like to fill in on the rare occasion that his team might need another player to complete a tournament roster. I told him I'd talk to Rhys and as you can imagine Rhys was more than amped to play more baseball. Anytime. Anywhere. Well, that call actually came Friday and after calling Rhys to see if he was on still board I let Chris know that we'd be glad to come out. So 24 hours after playing his first ever coach pitch game, Rhys was playing left field in a select league tournament.
It was a great time and Rhys had a great experience. Nothing got past him in the field and he made some good stops, he shook off some early inning nerves to knock out same base hits and scored a couple of runs as well. We dominated the first couple of games despite only having 9 players in the field, the other teams all had 10. (in coach pitch you can have 4 outfielders) In the end we came up three runs short of winning the tournament. Still, we took home some cool hardware for the second place finish and had a fantastic experience. The Tigers team and the parents could not have been nicer or more supportive and were just a really nice group of people. Griffin made quick friends with one of the other little brothers and played with him through most of the day and Avery read and took some pictures and video of the game, while Lexy watched and cheered from the bleachers and I paced the entire grounds. (I don't know how anyone can just sit and watch their kids playing.)
After the game and the team trophy presentations, the parents took team photos (one of which will be running the Belton paper) and had their post-tournament meeting with the coaches and parents. Chris presented Rhys with a mini-Louisville Slugger bat which the kids from the Tigers signed, thanking him once again for coming out. It was really touching and just another example of what their team is all about. Good parents. Good kids. Good baseball.
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