It’s Time to Go

I made a difficult decision tonight.  After more years than I can exactly remember I resigned from the Shallowater Little League board of directors.

I originally got involved in Little League years ago, first umpiring, then coaching, then serving on the board.  I’ve seen the makeup of the board change dramatically over these years to the point where it is now a vibrant, active board with good participation and honest debate on the issues, all focused on helping our kids have a healthy baseball program in Shallowater.

Some of the people I have first met via the little league program have become very good friends who’s company I enjoy and friendship I treasure.  I’ll miss working with them on the board but hope to still be involved as a volunteer enough to get to continue “hanging around” with them.  Although I won’t be on the board any more I expressed my desire to the rest of the board to continue to volunteer and help where I can….you don’t have to be a board member to help.

Thanks to each and every person I’ve served on the SLL board with over these years.  I have truly enjoyed my time with you and I think I leave at a point where the board is as strong as it’s ever been.  I know not everyone shares my point of view, but I think youth baseball in Shallowater is in great shape and headed in the right direction.

Baseball Will Break Your Heart

If you don’t believe it, you didn’t see the finals of the 2008 Little League Southwestern Regionals.

Two fine teams playing their hearts out in front of their moms, dads, relatives and fans.  Goes to extra innings.  Passes 11pm curfew.  So many tough situations were overcome in that game by players on teams that had been well drilled, knew what to do in each situation.  High drama.  Home runs to take leads.  Home runs to come back.  Big defensive plays to save the game — more than once.

This game had it all.  If you missed it, you missed out.

And it ends on a wild pitch in the bottom of the seventh by a kiddoe that really gave his all.  Looked like a real 12 year old, too, didn’t he?  Not one of these beard growin’, Danny Almanza Lying’-Fake, cheatin’ dudes.  A real, live Little League kid.  I don’t know that kid from Adam, but I can tell you here and now I love that kid.  I’d take him on my team any day.

Great baseball game.  Heartbreaking baseball game.  Many times, as today, they are one and the same.

Southwest Regional

Little League baseball’s southwest regional starts Friday with pool play.  We’ll do our best to keep the scores, pool play and elimination info coming as soon as we get it.

Follow Lubbock Southwest as they strive to reach the Little League World Series in Williamsport.

Can SW Do It Again?

Another elimination game.  Another win.

Southwest survived their first must win game against McAllister Park Monday, so Tuesday at 6pm it’s a winner take all matchup between those two same teams for a spot in the Regionals.

I understand that KJAK-FM is broadcasting this game.

Southwest Came Back

Lubbock Southwest came back from the brink in the 11-12 Sectional Tournament on Tuesday.  A big three run blast by Evan Gayler in the bottom of the seventh, and we had a walk off.  That’s got to be exciting.  Wonder if his feet are touching the ground yet?

The Little League pitching rules came into play in this one.  Since the second championship game started Monday but was interrupted by rain and continued on Tuesday, that allowed Southwest’s ace pitcher to return - given the extra day’s rest.  Trailing 8-3 when the game resumed I think we can say he did his job as Southwest held Midland scoreless in the continuation on Tuesday…

Southwest moves on to the finals of the Texas West division.  Follow the bracket to see if they can advance to the Regional round.

Southwest High Drama

Lubbock Southwest’s 11-12 team suffered their first defeat of the tournament on Monday 3-2 to Midland, forcing a second championship game.  That second game was suspended for rain in the 3rd with Lubbock trailing 8-3.

High drama for Southwest, which harbors dreams of reaching Williamsport.  Gotta win your state sectional first!

See the sectional bracket.

Call For Board Members

Shallowater Little League is putting out a call for new board members.  If you are interested check out their website and contact an existing board member.  Interested parties are encouraged to make their interest known now as next year’s board will likely be put in place and officers elected during either July or August.

The board has a lot of positive momentum right now.  Ongoing participation by the community will help assure that continues.  Please consider pitching in.

Failure to Launch

We never even got off the ground Saturday night in our playoff game.  Six runs in the second inning did us in before we got started.  We managed a run late but it was not nearly enough.  Cooper wins the tournament 8-1.

The pitching strategy was to save the best pitcher and see how many innings we could get through before having to go to him.  It was too many, as that six run second inning exploded in our faces.  Our dobbers were in the dirt after that and we never recovered.

Two different days we tried to “get by” instead of going for the throat.  The new pitch count rule will do that to you sometimes.  We had our chance to go for the throat Wednesday when it was do or die for them and to be honest the pitching was good enough.  The real culprit was hitting.  The last two games, we just did not get enough.  When your hitting is questionable, you must get your guys that are hitting up the max number of times.

Defensively we played cautiously and gave up easy bases to their runners too frequently.  We cannot do that.  We don’t consistently play against excellent pitching all year.  Cooper interleagued with Lubbock and did see this good pitching consistently all year.  We cannot expect our kids to suddenly turn the switch on in two weeks against this pitching they only see a few times a year. 

With our bats therefore somewhat questionable, we have to do all the little things right defensively, and we didn’t.  Twelve errors in three games.  No team is going to win many games with numbers like that.

Enough of the negatives, though.  This is a good group of kids with talent and positive attitudes.  They have a future in their division of baseball.  Playing against these much larger communities will help in the long run.

Another year of Little League in the books.  Have a great summer….

Their Turn…

Monday night we came up with the big play to lead our team to a win.

Wednesday night it was Cooper’s turn for the big play.

A three run blast over the left field fence fueled a five run fifth inning for Cooper, who came from behind to take a 5-2 win.  That evens the teams at 1-1, and sends them to a deciding winner-take-all game three Thursday night.

The loss cast a shadow on a couple of fine performances.  Hayden pitched very well, getting us into the fifth with the lead.  Logan blasted one to right center that one hopped against the fence, and Logan put on the afterburners and sped around the bases for an inside the park home run.

I was proud of Philip who regained his composure and showed some poise after the home run that put us behind.  He bounced back, struck out the remaining batters and went into the sixth still with good stuff.  Pitch count was the only reason he was pulled; he recovered nicely.

Shane managed to get us two outs on two pitches.  A wild pitch was recovered so quickly by Ryan that he was able to gun it to Philip and catch a runner from first attempting to steal.  The next pitch resulted in a lazy fly out to Koby in right field.  We needed that so we could get right back up to bat.

But to no avail as we could not get anything started in our sixth.

Two great baseball games have been played between these teams.  Win or lose, I hope the third one is just as good.

Clutch

Bottom of the sixth inning.  Team is down one run, 5-4.  Bases are loaded.  Two out.

Shallowater thought it had tied the game on a prior batter on an infield hit, but had to regather their emotions after the umpires (correctly) ruled the ball had hit the batter’s leg in the box and was thus foul.  Elation turns once again to tension as that runner is returned to third, the second out is subsequently recorded and the team is down to this one last chance.

A new pitcher comes to the mound to try to close out the game.  The batter digs in and is down 1 ball 2 strikes after the first three pitches.

One more pitch can decide the game.

And it does.

A walk off 2 RBI single flared to short center field by Shane scores Koby and Philip!  Shallowater wins!

All of this after the two starting pitchers, arguably the best two pitchers each team has, have battled most of the evening in an extremely close ball game.  Good sized crowd.  Lots of excitement for six full innings.  Both teams committed to burning their best pitchers in an all-out effort to win this game and stay in the winner’s bracket.  It almost paid off for Cooper; it just did  pay off for Shallowater.

The tournament is not over yet, and nobody has been eliminated.  There is still plenty of work to do.

But for one thrilling night at the ballpark our boys came through in the clutch.  Big time.

See it play by play, here: 2008-06-30-cooper

Box score: box-cooper-shallowater-20080630