How quickly this season has gone by, we played the last game of the regular season today. The start of the day saw us in fourth place out of five team, with the potential of ending up anywhere from 2nd to 5th. We played the first game and had to win for even a chance of staying out of the 4 seed/5 seed play in game next week. The top three teams get a bye next week, with the 4th and 5th place team playing for a chance to play the 1st place team when we have the final three games of playoffs on the 18th. I’d always rather have one less knockout game in the playoffs, so I really wanted to move out of fourth. Sadly, even with winning our game, we still had to rely on one of two teams losing, and they weren’t playing each other.
Our quest started out rocky, as the first two batters got on and the heart of their order was up. We somehow escaped without allowing a run, and scored one of our own in the bottom of the first even though we only had a runner on 1st (me) with two outs but managed a couple more hits. Our team has had a habit of two out rallies, hopefully we can keep that up. The other team responded with two runs from the bottom of their line up and we scratched out one more to tie it from the bottom of ours. A three run blast and another run from the second time through the order put them up 6-2, and the showboating during the home run kind of irritated me. I really wanted to win the game at this point, but we weren’t in a good place to do so at the time.
Well, that is until our turn to bat since we were sending up the top of the order again. While we may not have the big bombers, we can hit a bit, turning 5 hits (4 singles and a double) into 4 runs and tying the game again. We managed to keep their bats quiet for the rest of the game, only allowing two more runs while we managed to put up 5 more (another 4 on six straight hits when the top of our order came up again), and time ran out while we were batting in the bottom of the sixth with us up by 3.
We took care of our part, and now had to wait for the last two games to see what happened. The second game turned into a shellacking, but not in the way we needed, so it came down to the last game . . . which never got played because one of the teams had to forfeit because they only had seven players. Again, not the team that would have helped us, so we remained stuck in fourth place by half a game and have to play next week.
I’m very proud of my team and am particularly happy with our balance. Other teams have very strong top halves of the lineup and weaker bottom halves, but my team can generate offence from anywhere in the lineup. We have no automatic outs. We’ve beaten every team once except for the first place team (which we were beating when the final out line drive into the sun allowed them to walk off on us), so we have the potential to win it all. We just have to hope that some of the bounces that saw us lose two games by one run and tie another one go our way and we can get those wins.
Oh, I almost forgot, we played a pickup game in the forfeited games spot, so I got to play a bit more. Overall, I had one of my best hitting days ever, going 4/4 in both games, and cranking two doubles in the pickup game. Hopefully I can keep up this hitting performance through the playoffs (anyone have some wood I can knock on? I think all we have is particle board). Hoping for a sustained playoff run, I think this team can do it and deserves it after a rough beginning to the season.
Weight: 222 Loss: 18 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 346.2 miles
Softball Stats: Game 8 – 4/4 (1.000), 3 R, 2 RBI Season – 21/28 (.750), 5 2B, 14 R, 12 RBI
Fitocracy Level: 26 ID: disciplev1
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