Sunday, June 13, 2010

Thunder's encounter with the Wild Thangs

This week I was sick, I had mycoplasm and I felt like I had mono for four days.  I was one of the people in charge of Science at Bible School too.  So after two painful shots and a bunch of prescriptions I told my buddies I wouldn't make it.  I made it back on Wednesday, but no makeup and I look like death warmed over.  Thank goodness we were watching a cool movie in the dark so no one could see me too well.  Some of my preschoolers saw me and I swear they didn't recognized me.

We started Clara's softball tourney on Thursday night.  We won our first game and the second one we lost.  It was their first loss ( they won the tourney last week).  We went on to win two more on Friday night.  Saturday we had one at 9:00 and got to go home and rest until 3:00.  We had a hard win at 3:00 and then we faced another team immediately afterwards for the semi finals.  We played a team, I kid you not, named Wild Thangs.  Their colors were pepto pink and black.  They had their nicknames on their jerseys like Rix Bits, Rooster, Cookie, Tic Tac, and Lil Tay Tot.  They didn't have their shirts tucked in and they had a nice variety of black pants.  Spandex in the mix.  Imagine a large daddy with the same sized shirt as the girls stomping around barking orders.

It was hot as snot out there, and I was just sitting in the stands.  We have our own music system and mix masters, Rob and Ben. We have been exposing our kids to some awesome 80's tunes.  We had a horrible umpire, but more about that later.  This game Clara was catching.  We have a very consistent pitcher and she is great.  The umpire was crazy inconsistent,  which is not really that common.  Sometimes you don't agree with what the umpire chooses to like as far as pitches, but normally a pitcher can adjust.  We had no clue what he liked.  Except for he liked their pitcher.  She is a 10 or 11 and I think taller than me  (5'5).  She had this annoying habit of literally slinging the ball in there even if the girls weren't ready.  Our girls started holding up their hand to let the ump know they weren't ready, as soon as the girls started dropping their hands she would sling it in there.    Everytime she was up to bat she would steal the signals from the coach giving them to the catcher.  She just stared at the coach blatantly.  We were ahead most of the game and had several lost opportunities to get further ahead.  I am watching Clara bat and all of a sudden she is screaming on the ground.  She had hit her in the leg.  She had a hard time even walking off the field.  This was probably around the 3rd or 4th inning, and Clara was the first player she hit.  I was mad but thought it happens.  Clara actually has been hit several times but never in her leg. Clara was crying because she was hurt, mad, dirty and frantic she would have to come out of the game.  Clara limped out on the field to play catcher again.  She did fine but her movement was definitely limited.

I was icing her up in the dugout when their pitcher hit our pitcher in the leg.  Clara was livid and she hoped up to check on her friend.  Clara created a new signal for our pitcher, hit the batter, thank goodness the pitcher told Clara that might not be a great idea.  Then she proceeded to hit one of our best hitters, and our 3rd baseman.  Needless to say the hot day got hotter.  Then we settled down and Clara was moved to 2nd base because she could not run to get past balls.

The pitching coach changed all the signals, the pink pitcher stole them, and it was especially sweet when she struck out.    Sometime after this the umpire turned around and yelled at us, "Would you shut up and sit down, you have been complaining the whole game!!"  Are you kidding me?  I have seen some heated interchanges between umps and fans but never this.  Usually the ump would address the coach only and then he would proceed to warn the fans.  Then someone yelled he was being unprofessional, he screamed again "You need to just shut up, and sit down."  He was really young and showed it.  We tied it up and then went into extra innings.  We were visitors and batted first needless to say Clara struck out looking because she was traumatized by her last at bat.

We lost by one.  It was sad.  After the game I looked up in the stands and one of the older brothers had tears in his eyes.  So precious.  One time Clara made a great play, Rob yelled out "That's my sister!!" and his other friend yelled out "That's my sister's friend."  One of my sweet friends actually chased down the umpire and he was extremely hostile.  Her beef was not with his calls but the way he handled himself.

The pepto team went on to lose to a team we beat last week.  I wasn't sad at all.  

So that was a not so quick recap of our weekend.  Brian's parents came to visit, it was nice for Clara to have some grandparents there.  Rob leaves for his first church youth trip tomorrow.  We will miss him and it is weird he is old enough to go.  The curfew is 11:30.  But I know he will have a blast and it will be a special experience.  He will be back in time for most of Clara's games next weekend.

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