Well, got back from the New York State 10-Man B State Tournament for modified-pitch softball on Sunday.
Unfortunately, it was without any hardware.
We went 2-2 and had to play all our games Saturday. And this is where I’ll go into a slight rant and if you’re not into softball, you might be like “What the hell?”
The tournament was 27 teams, which is the biggest I’ve ever seen for this tournament. And I’ve been going for probably 12 years. I love the fact the tournament has grown because it shows softball is doing well. At the same time, it hasn’t grown with true “B” teams, rather “A” teams finding ways to slip through and drop down to have a better chance at winning. This will all make sense later.
We open the tournament with an ass-whipping. We get up 11-0 on this team, our pitcher had a no-hitter going through four innings, and we were all set to end this in five with the run-rule. Instead, one of our players mentions the no-no, it ends with two outs in the fifth, they score three and we move on. We ended up winning like 12-3 or some crap like that.
Then we have to play right away. In the winners bracket. Unreal. AND we have to travel to another field, which is BS. We get there and who do I see? This A pitcher I know. And his team isn’t B by any means. We get lambasted, they hit a shitload of homers off us and we’re knocked in the losers bracket. We basically had no chance after the second inning or so.
We then have to play right away _ again. At the same field at least. It’s against a team we have played a bunch before up at this tournament. And we haven’t ever lost to them.
You know, when you play sports, there are teams you just can’t seem to lose to? They are that way to us.
It didn’t look good, however. We’re down 5-1, they are owning us and then one inning went crazy. We scored seven, took the lead and rolled from there. I think the final was 13-5 or something along those lines.
But, turnabout is fair play, I guess. See, we also have those teams we can’t ever seem to beat at this tournament. And next up was them. We led, 6-5, entering the seventh. Got tight, gave up two, didn’t score in the bottom, and lost, 7-6, and got eliminated from the tournament.
All in all, I guess it’s OK. We’ve had some good strides at the tournament the last year. And we haven’t played great the whole season, but here we played pretty decent. I would have liked to have placed a lot higher, but you can’t do anything about it.
The only thing that sucks is we had a deep team there this year. We had a total of 17 who went up and everyone got at least one at-bat and got into most games, which was pretty sweet.
For those that actually know us, the team shot will likely be up in the gallery soon under my random shots.
Next up is to finish the regular season, move into playoffs, and plan for nationals.