Life of Wry

Ah, the District-64 Post Season All-Star Tournament, a summer tradition.

Our district includes teams from Davis (two teams), Woodland (two teams), Vacaville (three teams), Dixon, Esparto, Winters and Rio Vista–eleven teams in all who compete for district title in this tournament.  The winner will go on to play winners of other districts, then the winners of regions, and so it goes, all the way to Williamsport.  But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.

The D-64 tournament is the culmination of the season, and getting selected for the team is always an honor. For Peter, it’s his fourth post-season all-star team and this one will be the final hurrah in his Little League experience.

So.. our guys: Davis Little League, Nationals, 11-12s.  This post season’s been extremely fun.  We’ve got a colorful and experienced coaching crew, a wonderfully nice and talented group of players, easy to hang with parents, and, so far, some really good baseball’s been played.

Since Wednesday, they’ve won two games–decisively, resoundingly, impressively, and lost one, also rather decisively.  In the first round, they played Woodland National and beat them 16-0, and in the second round, they beat Winters 21-0.  Today, however, they lost to Vacaville Central 13-2.  Today’s drubbing kicks them down into the elimination bracket (or loser’s bracket), which means they can’t lose another game, or they’re out.  They’re now in the claw back portion of the tournament draw where they’ll play daily (as long as they keep winning) for a chance to face the winner of the winner’s bracket, and if they’re lucky enough to get that far, they’ll have to beat them twice (since it’s a double elimination tournament).  It’s not impossible to win the championship, but it’s a tall order… a must-win-the-next-five-games kind of tall order.

Darn if our district isn’t dominated, year after year, by the Vacaville Central team.  Every year, every age group.  Or so it seems. In fact, all Vacaville teams are powerful and always seem a notch above.  Not sure why that is.  It takes an extraordinary squad and a bit of luck to topple a Vacaville team.  The kids know this and it always seems to psyche them out a little.

As I said, though, the Davis Nationals are a competent and solid team; everyone is strong and contributing, so you can’t rule anything out.  After three games, they’ve got a team batting average of .380.  That’s impressive!

Tomorrow, they’ll play Woodland American and it should be a far more competitive contest.  Fingers crossed they can get in another win.  The Davis American team is also still in, also fighting its way through the elimination bracket; tomorrow they face Vacaville National.. and could pull it out… ya never know.  In fact, if both Davis teams win tomorrow, they’ll face one another… which would be a lot of cross-town fun.

Anyway, picture of the day‘s gotta be a tournament shot and may as well be Peter on the mound, you know, since it’s my blog and all.  Not his best outing today, though.  He was the second of four pitchers and he gave up only two hits, but he put too many guys on with 3 walks and a hit batter.. so that when that one guy got a home run and that other guy got a base hit, they were costly.  The little man wearing #7 gave up five earned runs in one inning.  Ouch.

On the plus side, he was two for two at the plate, with a nice double. So…yay.

Altogether, the Davis Nationals got five hits today, but couldn’t convert them to enough runs.  The end result: mercied after three and a half innings.  Yuck.

After today’s loss, the team went to Fenton’s for ice cream and a number of them have been hanging out and swimming.  Bad day, but not all that bad, ya know?