Life of Wry

I’ve written so much about this tournament already, I think in wrapping up this Boras story, I’ll just post some pictures.

We’d delivered the boys to Berkeley’s Evans Diamond at about 9:00 for batting practice and some loose warm up.

(Photo: Boras Twitter feed.)

And then.. it rained. And rained and rained. In May, that was about the last thing we really expected.. but there ya go. Our 12:05 game time was not happening, but, wow, after all the planning and travel and ESPN coverage… the show just had to go on if at all possible, so we just waited it out, while the organizers had coronaries.

The boys and coaches helped the field maintenance guys spread a tarp over the infield…

(Photo: Boras Twitter feed.)

And then they did some of this:

(Photo: Korlyn’s Facebook.)

That is the team from Mira Costa (Manhattan Beach) playing our guys in a game of touch football. Pretty wonderful, huh? Just a bunch of guys waiting for a baseball game to start. This about made me cry. (A comment Dianna drolly responds to with, “What doesn’t?”)

Meanwhile, parents scattered at cafes and restaurants around campus. We spent a few hours at the Blue Door Cafe on Bancroft–a place Peter and I had eaten on a trip to Berkeley about a year and a half ago… kind of a sentimental favorite of mine for that reason. It was pretty packed with students on a rainy day…

We had a nice time just shooting the breeze…

We finally got word that the game would start.. and headed over! The camera crews and announcers are ready, the field is ready, the umps and coaches are ready, and the boys are ready:

(Photo: Korlyn’s Facebook.)

Look who dropped in!

(I’m so bad at taking selfies. I am not really shellshocked.)

Daniel’s, Solly’s, James’, Ray’s, Pierce’s, Mason’s, Peter’s coach from the Crush days, Mr. Tim Busbin, who shaped a good third of this team. Those are his wonderful parents in the background, who often showed up to games, as well. All of us under our umbrellas, because it continued to drizzle for the first couple innings.

Here’s a shot of the game underway. Tim took this one and I really like it.. Berkeley’s field has a classic old-timey feel to it:

(Photo: Tim’s Facebook.)

I show this one (below) because of the young Mira Costa fans a few rows down who thought it was clever to distract our pitchers by waving shimmery green pom poms behind the plate. It was not clever or appreciated–at least in my opinion. Peter would later say he was utterly unaware of them.

And yeah, that’s Peter on the mound. He faced four batters in the latter 2/3 of the 5th inning. He relieved for Bell who had a truly fantastic outing today against a very aggressive, hard hitting team. Ryan had started to poop out in the top of the fifth but until then had looked great. Up to this point, we were keeping pace with the Mustangs (2-2), but then two two runs came in, two additional runners were on base, and Ryan was pulled. And that’s the thing about relieving. The runs, because they reached base at the previous guy’s hand, are part of his record, but it’s the reliever’s job to keep them on the bases and not let them come in. Mira Costa took full advantage of those two baserunners by hitting a double and sac fly to bring them both in.

Davis had some good moments (including nice hits from Kreidler, Hessl and Henrickson), but Mira Costa’s 5th inning flurry was too much to overcome, even with Holgate’s 2-run homer in the bottom of that inning (so exciting..and he went on to earn defensive player of the game). Four hits overall, though, was all we could muster–so unlike this previously crazy hitting team–and we lost 7-4.

They seemed to take it really hard. Three losses in a row for a team that until recently had a total of only three losses over twenty six games! Where’d the mo go?

No gatherings after the game, at least not for us.. Peter was really down and ended up falling asleep on the way home.. not his usual M.O.

(Please don’t mention you saw this photo.) He was so tired, he stayed in the car for quite awhile after we got home, just sorta passed out.

But he finally rallied, and hit the backyard with his clubs…

So I guess all is right with the world again.

The whole Boras experience, final loss notwithstanding, turned out to be exceptional.