Opening Day

The opening ceremonies went fairly smoothly this year even though they were still putting up netting and backstops while pictures were being taken! Check out the Southside baseball site for a really cool aerial view of the field with most of the teams out there. The poor T-ball teams were getting their team pictures taken when they were trying to do this.

Robert's team played the opening game at 11am this year. We were all kind of worried because they really goofed off a lot during the practices over the past month. When they took the field on Saturday, it was like they had a completely different set of kids out there! They looked amazing! While they were doing warm ups, I got a chance to take a few pictures of Robert at first base. For the first time, I got to see how fluid his movements really were. It was absolutely amazing!

For the actual game, Robert's coach asked RJ to do the announcing for them. Needless to say, RJ was begging me to come up to the pressbox to do the books. While it's the best seat in the house, it was very difficult for me because you can't cheer from there! And I didn't get video of Robert playing. Which means I didn't get video of Robert's play of the game: an unassisted double play at first! He snagged the ball out of the air to get the batter out then ran over to tag first to get the runner out to end the inning! After tagging, he tossed the ball to the pitcher's mound and jogged to the dugout like it was no big deal. But you should have seen the grin on his face when he looked up at the pressbox!

At the end of the game, Robert was upset because he blew one play then struck out his next at bat. I took him over to the coach who keeps the team's game book to show him how many plays he had coming to first base. His outs at first base accounted for every single out in their innings except for 2. That percentage right there put him in the same league as many of the high school players out there now. That right there is amazing considering this was his first game starting at first base.

Even though they ended up lossing 6-7, those boys played an awesome game. They were the youngest average age team going against the oldest average age team. If that is any indication of how this season is going to be, then there is going to be a lot of hoarse parents out there!