[Ksyrup]

Well, we finished up our 1st year 12U season with a nice, albeit odd, 2nd place finish in our last tournament.

Saturday afternoon/evening we played 2 pool games. We lost the first game 8-3. The girl who pitched imploded in the 2nd inning and they scored all 8 runs before the coach pulled her (queue foreshadowing). I questioned starting her against a good hitting 2nd year team, but whatever. Caitlin pitched the 2nd game and was 1 flair over the 1B’s head in the 4th from pitching a 6 inning no-hitter. She was awesome. We won 3-0.

All the Sunday games got moved back 2 hours because of rain overnight, so we played our first elimination game at 3pm. We played a real good 2nd year team that we unofficially adopted as our sister team – all the girls have become really good friends, and they finished top 8 in the Columbus tournament we finished top 16 last weekend. Caitlin pitched a 3-hit shutout, and we won 3-0 again.

Next game was the semifinal, and we won 2-1 behind our 3rd pitcher.

That set up the championship game against a big rival team, the one coached/owned by the millionaire jackass (I'm sure I mentioned that bastard in this thread). And here’s where the weirdness started. First, the coach decided to pitch the girl who got lit up in the first game on Saturday. This team can hit. I know she pitched less than 2 innings all weekend, but now’s not the time to even out the innings or play favorites. But whatever, I can live with that. Right off the bat, they hit her. 2 in the first, 4 more in the 2nd. At this point, we’re down 6-0 going into the 3rd, but we scored 1 and Caitlin hit an RBI single to make it 6-2. So I’m thinking Caitlin’s coming in to shut the door and give us a shot and getting back into it, right? It’s a 7 inning game, no time limit, so we can do it. Nope. She actually got through the 3rd with just a couple of runners and no runs, but we don’t score in the top of the 4th and she goes back out there in the bottom of the inning and gets blasted. It was so bad the ump came out in the middle of the inning and asked if she needed a drink! They get 6 runs and we get run-ruled 12-2 without Caitlin throwing a single pitch. She must have thrown 130 pitches, easily.

So we finished 2nd, and that was great and all, but I’d be lying if I said that didn’t bother me. Caitlin should have started, but at a minimum, she should have come in at some point while we still had a chance. It just felt like he went with loyalty over winning. Over the last 3 tournaments, this team has won 7 games, and Caitlin has won 6 of them. The math’s not hard to do. I’m generally not “that guy” who pushes for his daughter to pitch, but in the championship game, you play to win, not to make sure egos aren’t bruised or everyone gets their innings quota. She's a very good pitcher and has been solid all year, but we gave up 21 runs all weekend, and she gave up 20 of them – in less than 5 innings pitched.

And so it ends.... until it begins again, next weekend. No games, but tryouts, team meetings, planning fall schedule, workouts, fundraisers, etc.