Life of Wry

Remember the other day when I said I loved baseball games whatever the weather?  Yeah, well, almost, but not quite.

Crush’s tournament is in Vacaville this weekend, at the base of gorgeous, California-esque, rolling, oak-covered hills. After a wonderful 8:00am game in which the boys continued their winning and playing-fantastically-well streak, (and, incidentally, it was bone-chilling, but the sun did come out) we returned home for the world’s longest-ever break between tournament games.  Weird to be home in the middle of a tournament day, but we got lots done, went out to lunch, some of us (not me) took naps, etc.

Then we drove back to Vacaville for a 5:00pm and 7:00pm pair of games.. but instead, this happened:

Rain.  Here’s Jim waiting it out in the car, texting to pass the time.  Finally, tournament organizers decided to start the game anyway.

I took a seat in the dugout (under cover!), which was way worth the price of admission… being that immersed in teen boy team culture is eye opening, to say the least.

We’d gotten this far into the top of the first inning..

..Dustin got a single (a flare to left), Gavin and Ben walked: bases loaded, no outs!  (In fairness to the Hard 90 pitcher, the ball was so wet he had a hard time gripping it, making it very difficult to places his pitches.. thus the walks.) Then Pierce was up. The count was one ball and two strikes.  He took a practice swing, as you do, and, shockingly, he lost his grip on the wet bat and it went flying out of his hands and over the visitors’ dugout… causing all manner of confusion and surprise.  It was startling, unsettling and lead people to think hm, maybe it IS a little too wet out here.  

So, this happened..

.. a coaches and umpires powwow on the mound.

These are never easy decisions.  A little rain never hurts, in fact 13 and 14 year old boys think it’s pretty awesome (we in the uncovered stands think otherwise). And you never really know when the rain might let up. Probably the greatest factor in the choice to continue playing in the rain: tournament organizers hate to have to refund money.. so postponing or canceling a game just makes these guys sweat baseballs.

But… safety first.. flying bats=not a good thing, not to mention a serious liability for the organizers, so they called the game and we went home. We’re supposed to return at 8:00am tomorrow (yeah, another 8:00am start, which means arriving at 7, which means leaving Davis at 6:15 in order to fit in a stop at Starbucks, which means getting up at 5:30, and did I mention it will be a Sunday morning?) and if we win and keep winning, we’ll play 753 games tomorrow between the make-ups and the regular pool play and the championship rounds, and whatnot.

Not a fair-weather fan (right? I love it anytime anyway anywhere), but, I guess I have a slight preference for last weekend’s conditions–warm, dry, sunny, in-town…

Not that it wasn’t gorgeous out there tonight in a stormy sort of way. If you can make this out, you’ll see rain pouring down in the glow of a field light..eerie-ish.

And even if you can’t make that out, it’s still a pretty evening.