Baseball Journal

[lung buster]

Our girls did it again and won the tournament championship last weekend!



We are off this weekend but will get back at it again next weekend. Our travel season is already half over and we only have 4 more tournament's on our schedule. Time is flying but we're enjoying every moment!

 

[Big_Holla]

Heck yeah, that's great news!!

 

[Big_Holla]

Divide and conquer begins this weekend for our family! Pretty much every weekend we have something going on with both kids til the beginning of August. Yesterday I took the day off to get Jenna to her tournament. They had 2 pool play games, won one and lost one. Good thing was they were in the loss pretty good til an error filled inning. Not bad for their first outing since winter. Today my wife has her at her tourney again and my son has his game later today elsewhere. Truck isn't running right so I'm not planning to head down to her games later if they continue in brackets so it will be a boy's day so maybe him and I will end up at the river fishing tonight.

 

[Buckmaster]

2 more regular season games to go this week and tournaments begin Friday.

A new format to us....3 innings coach pitch followed by 3 innings of kid pitch. Yes, that's right....7 year old kid pitch.

We had pitching tryouts yesterday and my son came out on top. He doesn't have the velocity of some of the other boys but he can hit the strike zone with the most accuracy. Looks like he'll be our number one.

Yesterday we also signed up for Year 3 Pee-Wee football. My boy will be at the top of the food chain this season so we look forward to lots of personal success with him.

 

[ajupsman]

High school season is over here. We won our 1st round game but got knocked out in the quarterfinals. No rest for the weary though. Legion ball starts this week with our 1st game on Thursday.

 

[cotty16]

Glad to see legion ball is still active up there. It's still going here, but it's not what it used to be. Lots of memories playing legion ball. These kids don't get to experience what it was like in the 70's, 80's and early 90's. I grew up around it and got to see it in its heyday.

 

[cotty16]

Baseball, baseball, baseball! Busy as hell. My summer team, which is made up of kids who aren't quite ready for legion, but will be returning to either my varsity or jv next year, has been playing a full schedule all June.

Every once in awhile they're short players due to vacations or other sport camps, so Kody and Klay have been filling in. The team is made up of kids going into 10th and 11th grade. Kody is going into 9th and Klay is entering the 8th. They've held their own and have contributed both offensively and defensively.

Their pony league has just wrapped up and they begin all star play this weekend in Boardman. Kody is the catcher and Klay plays Ss/2b while also becoming a solid pitcher.

I'm their worst critic, but I'm also very proud of them. Both have been stroking the ball pretty consistently. Kody has thrown quite a few runners out and is becoming a solid back stop. Klay is just an aggressive player that gets after it.

Katie finished up her coach pitch season losing in the championship game by one run. She had a blast! The only girl on her team, yet they batted her 6th and she held her own.

Love watching them play.

Good luck to all of you and your kids continuing tourney play or just getting in to the tournaments as post season all star players.

I'll leave ya with one pic of Kody smacking a double earlier this season.


Katie cracking a single


Klay turning on one with me in the background on the bucket.

 

[ajupsman]

Looks like fun Cotty. I can see your kids know how to swing the stick. Enjoy it while you can. My oldest graduated high school 2 weeks ago and his baseball career ended the same day. Graduation was in the morning and our quarterfinal game (which we lost) was that afternoon. Damn it goes by quick. My youngest was a freshman this year and is playing for me on the Jr. Legion team I'm coaching. It's about to get real busy. We play 4 -5 games a week until the end of July. We do have a 6 day break around the 4th of July but other than that it will be wall to wall baseball. I do love summer ball though. Any kid whose willing to play in the summer really likes the game.

 

[cotty16]

Unfortunately, summer isn't just for baseball anymore.

My sons', and most of my players, daily schedule consists of football from 8-11 am, basketball from 12-2, and baseball at 6.

Kody plays football and baseball. Klay is all three. Kids today don't have time to be kids during the summer. Keeps them out of trouble, but it also causes some good athletes to give up sports they should be playing because they do want to enjoy life once in awhile.

I've seen kids quit football just to play baseball and vice versa. It's a shame.

 

[ajupsman]

I know. It's the same thing here. I had 18 players on my varsity team and only 7 are playing summer baseball. The others are doing basketball, soccer or both. Baseball requires the most travel so only the really committed play.

 

[cotty16]

I make it mandatory to play somewhere. That's one of the reasons I created the summer team we have. It's kinda like a junior legion. I'm very flexible with football, basketball, and vacations. I'm also fortunate that the football coach is very supportive of all sports. We actually do off season workouts together in the winter.

As far as legion ball, it always has taken a huge commitment, but I loved it. Football wasn't as involved the though.

Nowadays, it does take a special breed to do both legion and football. In fact, most of my kids who play legion are baseball only.

 

[Buckmaster]

Our baseball season has concluded with our double elimination tournament loss.
We went 6-8 in regular season play despite playing all the advanced teams.
We went 2-2 in our tournament games played in Champion.
Next season we will lose our three existing 8 year olds meanwhile bringing back our ten 7 year olds.
We should be strong in 2016. Baseball practice begins in the gym following football season.

A couple weeks off then we're off to football practice/conditioning.

 

[ajupsman]

Our Jr. Legion regular season ended Saturday and we finished 11-7 in league play. That's good enough for 3rd in our division and qualified us for the state tournament. We play one of the top teams from the other division on Friday night. It's a double elimination tournament so we are guaranteed at least 2 games but I'd be very disappointed if we went 0-2.

 

[Big_Holla]

I regretted not being able to make it down to the summer gathering for sure but man I have got to say I am so glad that I didn't make it!! My son Allen's team the Macomb Sting had a tournament scheduled for the weekend. It was the last one for the season so I was sure I couldn't miss it. Saturday started off with one win, the second game the team no-showed. Sunday they lost their first game so they had to win the next game to stay in it. They won 9-7 in a nail biter of a back and forth game to make it to the finals. Championship game had them playing the team they just barely beat and boy they put a whooping on them winning 16-3! The second pic is Allen with his coach!

 

[ajupsman]

Congrats to you and your boy Chuck. Looks like you guys had a fun weekend.

 

[cotty16]

I'll be missing Strouds for a similar reason. Kids first man! My boys will be into football during Strouds so it's highly doubtful I make it. Stinks, but we only get one shot at watching them grow up.

Congrats to your boy!

 

[brock ratcliff]

Congrats to your boy Chuck!

Mason's "All Star" team finished up their tourney play this weekend. They finished 2nd, ran out of pitching in the Championship game. Mason only had 3 innings left going into the big game, our number 2 pitcher had none, and the boys that still had available innings threw batting practice the last 3 innings of the game. Mason struggled at the plate last weekend, and has all year off and on. I'm ashamed to admit that it took me so long to figure out his issue but we got him squared away again. He hit really well in the two games played on Sunday. I'm loading up a vid of him pitching a quick 3 up 3 down inning in the Championship game. I will post it when it's done loading.

 

[brock ratcliff]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CynBOLyE1GY&feature=youtu.be

That's my boy...

 

[Big_Holla]

Good stuff right there Brock!! Thanks everyone!!

 

[cotty16]

You know what he does well? He hides the ball on his delivery. When you zoomed in I could really see that. Those hitters aren't seeing he ball until it is out of his hand.