Well the first season of 2008 is over and it was definitely a lot of fun. The Fellowship and The Posse finished up their last games Monday night. Here are the summaries:

The first game of the night had The Fellowship playing Hope Lutheran. The Fellowship did pretty well offensively, scoring 10 runs in the game. Unfortunately the defense was not up to the task and a few fielding errors allowed Hope Lutheran to put 15 runs up and come away with the victory.

Game 2 was a showdown between The Fellowship and The Posse. The Fellowship struggled to find their swing and coupled with some really good defense by The Posse, the result was a 10-0 victory for The Posse.

The Posse were just getting started though. Their second game was against Hope Lutheran. It was a defensive battle throughout with neither team really getting their offense rolling. The Posse again played some great defense and went into their final at bat as the home team down 6-5. After 2 straight outs, Greg and Bruce each got on base with singles. Eric then came through with a clutch line drive to center field that scored Greg and Bruce for the victory!

As a side note, the next game was between Baybrook and LC Church of Christ. Baybrook was fighting for a chance to be the league champs and they were able to beat LC! This meant they stuck around for the final game because they also needed The Posse to beat LC in order to clinch the title.

The Posse came through with a stellar opening. In the first inning they sent 15 batters to the plate and scored 10 runs! The inning was highlighted by back to back triples from Rich and Cory. However, the next 3 innings the bats went silent. Despite some pretty good defense, LC was able to get back into the game with a few runs in each of those 3 innings. Going into the last inning, it was tied 10-10. LC was the home team so The Posse came to the plate trying to put some pressure on. With 2 outs and men on first and third, Cory blasted a 3 run homer over the hill in left field. This proved to be the decisive blow as the defense made some excellent stops to keep LC from scoring in their final at bat. The Posse wins again, 13-10!!

It was a great way to end the season. Danny says the next season will start after July 4. I don't know if that means the immediate Monday after the 4th or if it will be another week after that. we'll keep you posted.

Tonight was frustrating.

Without going into detail, I possibly cost The Goodfellas their last game by not following through on what I thought was a mis-spoken schedule update from Danny two weeks ago. As a result, we missed our game time and ended up having to forfeit. I was pretty aggravated over the whole thing.

The Fellowship did get to play their second game and beat Baybrook Baptist by a score of 11-9. It was a pretty well played game as each team earned their runs with not many defensive errors to give much away.

The Posse were not able to get their bats going in their first game of the night. With only 3 runs scored, they fell to Clear Lake Baptist. Immediately afterward, they finished up a game that got postponed due to the sprinkler system going off in mid game back near the beginning of the season. The end result of that game was a 10-10 tie with Baybrook Baptist.

I apologize to all you guys who were affected by the scheduling gaffe tonight. I feel I was at least partly responsible. For The Goodfellas - it has been a ton of fun this year (as usual) playing with you guys. I look forward to the continuation in the following season. As for The Posse and The Fellowship, good luck next week in your last games - finish strong and make us proud!

-Greg

We were able to field 2 out of 3 teams on Saturday June 14 for this season's tournament. The Posse had too many people out of town or otherwise unavailable so they did not play in the tourney. They did have 3 guys come out and help the other two teams field enough players to play.

The morning started at 9:20 with The Goodfellas and The Fellowship of the Swing playing each other. The Fellowship jumped out early with several runs in the first inning. The Goodfellas were able to slow them down after that but were never able to score enough runs to win. The Fellowship won 12-8.

The Fellowship played next at 11 and were not able to stay in the winners bracket. They were able to muster up 8 runs but that was not enough to carry them to victory against League City Church of Christ who eventually went on to win the tourney.

Right after that The Goodfellas had a great come from behind victory. Down 5-1 at one point, The Goodfellas pulled into a tie during their last at-bat. They then had to take the field to prevent Hope Lutheran from scoring again. The defense held and sent the game into extra innings. By rule, each team started with a man on second and each batter came to the plate with a 3-2 count. The Goodfellas put up 4 runs and held Hope Lutheran to only 1 run to win the game!

This brought up another meeting between The Fellowship and The Goodfellas. In what can only be described as a game of destiny for The Goodfellas, it ended up being a blowout. Although The Fellowship played pretty fair defense, their bats went cold and The Goodfellas had one or their best offensive games of the season. Evidence of the way things were rolling for The Goodfellas:

• Docky, not exactly known as a power hitter, hit his first home run of the season, a grand slam, with a line drive into right field that rolled over the hill.
• On a smash line drive up the middle, Noel made a great catch and then made an even more spectacular throw to first, leading Greg to the bag, around the runner, to get a double play.
• Docky made a great running/diving catch in right field
• Greg hit a fairly routine line drive single to right center that appeared to hit something in the grass (possibly a sprinkler head) which caused the ball to bounce totally over Aaron....all 6'-5" of him!

It was a crazy game to say the least. This loss put The Fellowship out of the tourney.

In the next game, The Goodfellas wished they could have used some of the runs they got against The Fellowship in the previous game. It was a close game for 3 or 4 innings with each team only scoring one run in what looked like a classic "pitcher's duel" and a defensive battle. Then Baybrook broke out with a couple of home runs in an inning and then scored some more in the next inning and ended up wining 8-1.

All in all it was a GREAT day of awesome fellowship and fun times. Lots of great fans came out to support us. It has been suggested that the play of the day was Nina Parker showing up with some Gatorade! Good times as usual.

Game 1 tonight started off in familiar territory. The Goodfellas could not string any hits together at all. Through 3 innings they had only scored 2 runs. Down by 4 they went into the 4th inning hoping to turn things around....boy did they ever!

With the bases loaded and one out, Joel came to the plate and cracked a hard line drive to left center that found the gap and went over the hill. He came all the way around to score on his first home run of the season - a grand slam! Then with two outs and the bases loaded again, Greg popped one over the hill in right field for the second grand slam of the inning! Kyle followed it up with a solo shot and that capped an eleven run inning that proved to be the pivotal in the 13-6 victory.

Game 2 ended early. The offense didn't exactly sputter, it was more like it failed to have the key in the ignition. Basically in 3 innings everyone batted once and scored zero runs while St. Mary's was throwing runs on the board in bunches. Game 2 ended the night early as a run rule loss for The Goodfellas.

REMEMBER!!! Tournament is this Saturday, June 14. We're going to need as many players as possible to show up. We're hoping to have enough to field two teams.

The first game of the evening featured The Posse vs. The Fellowship of the Swing in their first match-up of the season. The Posse could not find their bats, only putting up 2 runs late in the game. The Fellowship on the other hand were making decent contact and were also helped by some poor fielding by The Posse. The Fellowship won the game pretty handily.

Game 2 saw The Posse's hitting woes continue. They were able to put up 5 runs against Baybrook Baptist but it was nowhere near enough as Baybrook won the game rather easily.

In the final game for our church teams The Fellowship got themselves out of a jam early on a fluke triple play! With a man on 1st and 2nd and nobody out, the ball was hit sharply to Dwayne. He fielded the ball, stepped on 2nd and threw to 1st for the classic double play. The runner on 2nd thought that ended the inning and was jogging to the dugout and Josh tagged him to finish the triple play. It was not a high scoring game and going into The Fellowship's last at-bat they were down 8-3. The bats came alive for 5 runs in the inning tying the game on Kyle Robeau's 3 run, line drive, home run that went straight down the 3rd base line. However they could not push that last run across and ended up with the tie.

So now all three of our teams are sitting on 3 wins each. Should be an interesting final few weeks!

NOTE! The tournament will likely be rescheduled due to 6/14 being the Saturday before Father's Day. We'll let you know when the final date is chosen.