Decided to move this from "rough day" since this was hardly a bad day for a Sunday. Saturday night, went to the Brad Paisley concert. Started Sunday off with a thumper of a headache. A little sweet talk and my wife had me feeling all better.
Come one o'clock, it's time for my son's baseball game. Saving my best pitchers for Tuesday's game, my second string comes in smoking; after 2 innings, we're up 7 to nothing. I'm feeling pretty comfortable, so to be fair to the kids, I rotate some of the outfield to the infield. The guys I rotated to the outfield now have a major case of the 'tudes. Both of them let fly balls fall on the ground without even trying to catch them. They score 5 runs. I'm wondering if I'll go to jail for kicking the sh*t out of a couple mouthy little 9 year-olds.
Fourth inning, we hold them scoreless, but they do the same to us, again. Top of the fifth, my boys come through; first two batters get on base and then my son slams one deep into center field. Two RBI's. Now we're at the top of the order (I always keep two strong batters at the bottom of the order) and we're smoking. Before the top is over, we've scored four, we're on top, 11 to 5. I gamble using my son to pitch the bottom of the 5th. He's not one of my starting pitchers but he had been practicing so hard. He was dead on in pre-game warm-ups, but now he's pitching like a wild man; ball is all over the place. First batter is walked. Second hits a single. They both steal and now we have runners on second and third with no outs. Third batter and he's behind in the count, 3 - 0. I'm thinking to myself, great, my son is going to blow the lead. I look at him, tell him to settle down, one pitch at a time. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and proceeds to whiff the next two batters with seven pitches. Two outs, runners on second and third. Now their big bat is up. My son pitches; strike one. Next pitch, high and wide. It's one and one. Next pitch, low and in the dirt. I'm ready to tear my hair out but I'm being cool and again, tell my son, one pitch at a time. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and fires his fast ball down the middle; stike two. The count is 2 - 2. He pitches again and the batter fouls it off over the backstop; if he had made solid contact, that would have been at least a double or more. Again, tell my son, one pitch at a time. He winds up, throws, the ball is hit, a one hopper straight back to my son. He catches it, fires it to first base, third out, game over. Afterwards, a cook-out at my brother's house, some cold Heiniken and a stupid ass movie (Blades of Glory). That was my day.
