Life of Wry

The Crush began this weekend’s tournament inauspiciously but ended up winning the whole enchilada. After losing their first game to the Defenders (7-9), they came back to win all their other games, including the championship game against… the Defenders (7-3)!  Love those full circle things.

In their semi-final game, the Crush beat a team considered to be one of the best in the region, if not the state (maybe the world).  In fact, that was the highlight of the tournament and it was a beautifully played game.  In the second inning, Peter hit a weak grounder to second but beat out the throw with a stomach slide into first base.  Not elegant, mighty unconventional, but it did the trick…he got on base and got Eric to third.  That would set up that cute play they do where: the-runner-on-first-distracts-the-pitcher-by-attempting-to-steal-second-while-the-runner-on-third-scores. Which they executed perfectly.  For the first run of the game.  Yay us.  (Of course a whole lot of other very spectacular playing occurred–some mind-blowing fielding, some artful, powerful pitching, a few eyebrow-raising hits… I just particularly liked that move.  Plus, I’m the mom.)

This was only Crush’s third tournament win in three years of playing together (if I remember correctly), but it comes during a season where they’ve grown significantly stronger — probably a combination of experience, a new coach this season who is beyond awesome, and hormones.

I could go on and on.  But, hard as it is to do, I’ll refrain from further baseball talk, in deference to non-baseball fan readers.

You’re welcome.

Anyway.. here they are:

Back row: Ben, Tim (aforementioned amazing coach), Peter, Daniel, Andrew, Dustin, Alex, Pierce, Gavin, Mark (dugout coach). Front row: either Eric or Andrew, either Eric or Andrew, Jonah and Brendan.  Just out of the picture to the left is Floyd (I kept asking him to move into the picture), our sign-stealing first base coach and another of the many reasons Crush is such a wonderful experience.