Saturday's Games -- NY/NY (Mets and Yankees)

We were slated to play 2 games today -- and the forecast had a high of 89 and an heat index of 102 -- so games of 7 innings -- no problem.....

We were matched up against the NY Mets (they brought two teams) this morning and we found out they were 0 for the tournament.  We went with our "big" lefty Will for the first the game.  Will is one of my favorite players from camp, first he is an amazing baseball player, 2nd he is a good guy, and 3rd (and not last) he is lefthanded.  We lefties have to stick together.  The start of the game it was sunny, hot, humid, sticky.  A Florida weather special for the summertime. Will had his A game on and he went 6 strong innings - I am going to guess they had 2 hits (maybe 3) off of him and only one time did they have a runner on third base (and he struck out 2 guys to end the inning) - our bats started going in the first - leadoff guy got on, moved to 2nd on an error and I was up to bat, I grounded out to 2nd allowing him to gain third and then a base hit to score him - 1-0.  We scored three runs in the fourth to extend the lead to 4-0, scratched another in the 5th and added another 3 in the sixth - Roiger came in and finished the game as it ended on a game ending double play -- 8-0.  Very well played game - great job by the entire team - a wonderful pitching performance by big Will.

We ended up getting the 2 seed in our division and we matched up against the Yankees team for our final game (this was not the same team we played earlier in the week) - the game was definately low key and for some other teams it was survival of the fittest -- a couple teams bailed out due to lack of healthy players - we were lucky that we had most of our team in tact, just having one player not playing but we still had 12 strong.  I surprisingly got the nod for pitching so got into the bullpen to get as loose as I could - my legs were pretty much jello and didn't know how much my arm/legs could pitch.  The weather was another factor - but the big upside with this game -- no more games after it so I could basically throw it all out there and not have to worry about tomorrow ("Would if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today" --name that movie quote).  We were the home team so I went out to try to execute the plan of pitching - control, throw offspeed stuff, and try to figure out my curveball -- well two of out three worked really well -- throwing to my more than capable catchers, I pitched a very nice game - I always try to get my inner Jamie Moyer going and figured out how to keep those darn Yankees off the base paths -- I did a very good job through the first 3 innings not allowing any hits -- the first hit was in the 4th and he came around to score on a long double by a "Phillies" defector, but by then our offense provided some runs to give us a 4-1 lead by then.  We tacked on another 2 runs as we move to the top of the 6th inning.  I was thinking of going 4 innings, but pitch count was low, so went out for a fifth inning -- 6 pitches later we were in the dugout.  So I went out for the 6th inning looking for another quick one -- well I did well and got the first two batters out, striking out one of them on a masterful changeup (he was way out in front).  I had the next batter with a 1-2 count and couldn't finish him off and he gained first via a walk.  The next batter I had 0-2 -- the next pitch was slightly inside and it grazed his elbow and he gets on first -- a couple scratch hits and they score another.  The bases are loaded with 2 outs and I am kicking myself for not taking care of business with those batters I had with 2 strikes - I was able to induce a line drive to shortstop to get out of the jam.  We decided that 6 innings was certainly a good enough outing and LA came in to close it out - pop up to short, strikeout, and a final out of another strikeout to end the game.  Twins win 6-2.

A good week (not a great week) by the squad - we end up taking 3rd place (out of 8 teams) and finishing with a 4-2 record, It was somewhat disappointing but we certainly showed the other teams we are a team to be reckoned with and future teams with Twins jerseys will represent well in the future.

Thanks again for following along -- as always check out www.yuratwin.com for info about the Twins Fantasy Camp (every year we play in January) and if you have questions about how much fun it is to play baseball -- feel free to email me at bennep@hotmail.com.

To see cool pictures from the tournament - http://springevents.smugmug.com/Other

Answer to name that movie quote - "Groundhog Day" -- one of my all time favorites......

~~ "You can observe a lot just by watching." - Yogi Berra ~~