Monday, May 25, 2009

2009 Gunners Baseball Memorial Weekend Tournament

While I was in New York, Jack spent the weekend playing baseball with the Elk Grove Gunners 10U team. They played two games on Saturday and two games on Sunday. The Gunners beat the Slammers by a score of 14 to 2 and lost to the Tassajara Valley Bulldogs by a score of 9 to 8 on Saturday. On Sunday, they beat the Sluggers by a score of 10 to 5 and the Bandit Baseball Club by a score of 6 to 5. The Gunners did not advance to the Championship game on Monday; they lost out on one of the tie breakers (runs scored?).

As best I can sort out, Jack was 4 for 10 at the plate. In the fourth game, Jack came up with the bases loaded and two outs. He ran the count to 3 and 2, fouled off a pitch and then drove a pitch into left center to score two runs. In his second at-bat in the same game, Jack swung at a curve ball in the dirt for his third strike. The ball got by the catcher and Jack was safe at first. He stole second and came home on a hard grounder by Matthew that the shortstop had trouble handling.

In the field, Jack played all four games at third base. It sounds like he had a particularly good tournament in field. Jack said that he handled a number of grounders cleanly, tagged out a runner stealing third and he and Aaron got a runner out in a pickle. Randy's son Aaron showed up on Sunday and played with the team for the first time.

Jack has played mostly third base on his rec team this spring. After laboring as the tenth, eleventh or twelfth player on the tournament team over the last ten months, it would be nice if he could win the starting third base position for the tournament team and the all star team. There is a lot of baseball to be played in the next month and a half.

Jack came out of this weekend as excited about and focused on baseball as I think I have ever seen him.

No comments:

Post a Comment