By Kelly:
Continued from The Streak Days 5-9
If there was ever any question about how I feel about baseball I hope this changes that. Over a 16 day period in July I spent every day at different ballparks between watching as a spectator, playing slow-pitch softball men’s and coed and umping slow-pitch softball. Here’s a recap of those 16 days.
Day 10 & 11 Saturday & Sunday July 20-21: This weekend I got to do something for the first time. My men’s softball team decided to play in a Midnight Madness tournament in Salem, OR. So the games start at 8:00 PM and go through the night with the last game at 6:40 AM. We were a late entry into the tourney due to a mistake from a tournament director on a different tourney but we were lucky enough to into this one.
There was no way I was going to make it through this weekend without some “help” so I stopped at a store and bought a 5 hour energy, which I have had only once before, and 2 energy drinks. Our first game was at 10:40 so about 10:30 I had my 5 hour energy and started to drink my energy drink. It didn’t take me long to get……well in the words of Will Ferrell’s son Texas Ranger in Talladega Nights, “I’m all jacked up on Mountain Dew” and oh boy was I!!!!!
We won our first game and had a game break. You would think a game break at midnight would hurt but not me since I was still buzzing from my “PED’s”. Though they weren’t performance enhancing drugs, they were more like endurance enhancing drugs. Between games we all went out to the parking lot to hang out. Too stay loose we tossed around a football which turned into a 2 on 2 game. I’m not going to say my team won but we did score more, that’s right Shooter.
Next game started at 1:20 AM. We lost that game by 5 or 6 runs. Our 3rd game was at 2:40 AM and we played against a team that we play all the time including in league. The score went back and forth all game long. We were lucky enough to be the home team and we were chasing 2 runs in the bottom of the 7th. We had tied it up with no outs and it was my turn to bat with runners on 2nd and 3rd. The pitcher on the opposing team happens to be the pitcher on my coed team also. He intentional walked me to load the bases which makes total sense but that’s not going to stop me from reminding him that he was scared to pitch to me. The next batter had a walk off sac fly and we won 22-21.
Our 4th game was supposed to be at 4:00 AM but the team we were to play had lost their 3 games all by 15 or more so they decided to forfeit. So it was nice to get the win but in the long run it hurt us because instead of playing and staying awake we sat around getting tired except for the group of us that played a little baseball golf. I was still all jacked up though. Our 5th game was at 5:20 AM and that team handled us pretty good. The game off affected us a lot. Our 6th and final game was at 6:40 AM. We did much better in this game but ended up losing in the bottom of the 7th. Overall we went 3-3 and took 4th place.
Round Trip: 192 miles
These 2 days were great. I had a blast and I was exhausted. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. This weekend brought my travel miles to 950 over the first 11 days.