2012-366 Day 317 – Softball Playoffs

Hope everyone enjoyed their observance of Veteran’s Day. I will quickly throw one more thank you out there and let you refer back to my last two posts for my feelings before moving on.

I will warn you ahead of time, I’m writing this on Sunday night/Monday morning, so I’m still a bit raw. We lost our playoff game 13-12, so we’re the first team out (the team we lost to will advance to play the number one seed next week). This is absolutely the worst kind of loss in the season, a one run game in the first game of the playoffs. There are so many things that I can point to that could have swung the game in our favor, so many places where we could have scratched across an extra run or prevented one of theirs from scoring.

The worst of it is that the game pretty much turned on bad luck (I don’t know any other way to put it but luck). I mentioned that I managed to secure the field in Simi and that it would give us a bit of an advantage since it might cut down on home runs. Well, we found out today why no one else wanted to rent this field, it is oriented in such a way that the sun sets directly behind the batter. For the entire game I was battling the sun in right center, but for the second to last inning, the sun was in a place where I couldn’t even see the plate. Their three and four hitters came up and hit it to me, but I couldn’t see the ball at all, and it wasn’t until I heard the ball land that I could determine where it was. Both hits went for triples (I guess I can count that as something, I managed to track them down before they became home runs), and there was absolutely nothing I could do about them (I was wearing sun glasses, had a hat on, and a glove with webbing in it, and none of it helped). There was another ball in the first inning that I misplayed off the bat that cost us another couple of runs. I’m not used to my defense losing games, but I was terrible out there today and couldn’t buy a break.

My hitting was a bit better, as I hit three singles and scored twice. My hardest hit was, of course, the only out I made, as I hit it to where I was standing the previous inning with the sun in my eyes, but since the sun had since gone down and the other team was playing with three outfielders which meant no one was where I had been, thus when the ball hung a bit the guy who was playing in left center was able to come track it down without having to look at the same angle I had been.

I really liked my team this year, but it did seem that we had a bit of a curse on us. We lost three one run games, two of those due to field conditions involving the sun blinding a player. I don’t think it means anything, but it certainly is a bizarre coincidence. I also feel that we could have beat any of the teams out there, so it stings to have the chance taken from us because we were playing at the wrong time on the wrong field. Of course, had things broken even slightly differently for us during the season, we wouldn’t have been in that position in the first place. In all, just disappointing to have things go so drastically against us, especially things (like the sun) over which we had no control.

I much prefer the ending last year, where we got knocked out honestly and gave it our best. It feels like a lot was left on the table this year, and now I have to start over from scratch next season. I do need to practice my defense more between seasons, so if anyone wants to help me out with that I’d appreciate it.

I suppose I have complained enough for now. I wish the other teams the best of luck, someone had to have taken ours (okay, okay, I’ll stop).

Weight: 222 Loss: 18 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 348.2 miles
Softball Stats: Playoff Game – 3/4 (.750), 2 R Season – 21/28 (.750), 5 2B, 14 R, 12 RBI
Fitocracy Level: 26 ID: disciplev1