I can't SLEEP!!!

I am too excited and HAPPY!

We had the most unbelievably good game tonight.

WE WON!! By 3 points.

24 Hours Earlier.....
The pink team played the maroon team and beat them by 16 points.
We struggled with that maroon team both times. we only beat them by a couple of points.

I knew we were going to lose to the pink team tonight. I just knew it!!
They are 4-1 and so are we. They have creamed all the other teams, and we just barely squeak by them.
I knew we were going to lose.

Tonight...
We were first up to bat. Our league has a safety net that a team can only score 5 runs in one inning. That is unless the play is still going on, then  you count all the runs that scored.

We had scored 4 runs already and we had runners on 2nd and 3rd. The catcher overthrew the ball to pitcher and we scored both runners on that play!
They got up and scored their 5 runs. Then they got us 4-up-3 down two innings in a row.
I knew we would lose, so I wasn't fretting too badly.

They scored a few each inning, so we had our last up-to-bats down 7-10.
We scored 3, then my pitcher and her sister the catcher were amazing.
It was tied at the end of 4 innings. So we had to go an extra inning.
Their pitcher, who is crazy fast and sometimes crazy wild but her catcher is 5' 9'' (and 12 years old) and stops everything walked a lot of my bottom-of-the-line-up batters, and we scored 5 runs the last inning. They were at the top of their line-up, and we held them to 2!!!

They have a batter that hits best with bases loaded. She hit two grand slams the previous night.
We had a signal for tonight, and we intentionally walked her without her knowing it was intentional!!!
Twice.
The one time our pitcher gave her a strike was in the last inning and she hit it to right field. My right fielder was one of my more solid fielders for this inning on purpose! She picked that ball right up and fired it to 1st base.
Fortunately, her throw beat the all-star catcher/batter to the base.
Unfortunately, her throw went over the first baseman's head.
INSTINCTIVELY, I took a couple of steps toward the ball to back up the  play and retrieve the ball. I even stuck out my hand to stop the ball!
Fortunately, my mind clicked back to reality before I touched the ball.

Hubby saw the whole thing, knew exactly what had happened to my brain, and turned around to laugh his head off!!!

Anyway, the play ended up that the catcher got to the ball quickly and fired it to 3rd base to get the girl who was stealing. Kinzie caught the ball, applied the tag, and we were happy.

Two dropped third strikes later, and tag-outs before they knew what hit them, and we were out of that overtime inning with a WIN!!  ( at 10:15 pm no less)

HOLLA!

My highlight of the evening was when Kinzie was up to bat with two strikes on her and 1 runner on base, and she hit that ball down first base line!
I mean, it followed the chalk line right down to 1st base. Then it bounced off the base and kept going.
She got a straight up triple!!! and an RBI!!

(The girl on base hit the ball right up the middle where no one was and had gotten a triple herself.) Kinzie earned her an In n Out burger for that hit.
Then Hunter Alld. gets up, more than 120 lbs lighter than the pitcher, scared to death of her pitches and SWINGS THE BAT at two of them. She struck out, catcher dropped the ball, Hunter ran to first, almost beat the throw, and scored an RBI for taking the attention off Kinzie so she could score! Yippee!

This was the team I kyped Kinzie off of to make my team. So her hitting against them is such sweetness.
Kinzie almost caught a pop fly that was over her head at 3rd base while running away from the infield. It was just barely out of her reach or she would have caught it. She LOVES pop flies.

More highlights include our new cheers that I made up spur of the moment.

We are the Tidal Waves:
 HIT 'EM HARD...tsuuuuuuuuuNAMI!!!  Ha Ha get it? and we all throw our hands from the middle of the circle straight up.

and FLOOD 'EM, TsuuuuuuuuuuNAMI!     (when we were up to bat.)

The Umpire...Hates me!
Hates the fact that I know the rule book better than he does!
Hates that I question him when he knows he's wrong:

He called a strike on one of my little girls for swinging the bat. Picture this: the bat went from her shoulder and stopped somewhere by her back/right knee, sort of like a golf swing. The bat never penetrated the strike zone. She clearly changed her mind about swinging and stopped the bat. But, no, mr. umpire didn't want to hear about it; he yells back at me, "I CALLED IT A SWING!"

Next example: the umpire didn't know that if the pitcher fake throws it at a runner while the pitcher has the ball in the "circle" she is not automatically out.
THEN: he tells me that these girls are only 11! And that he is not going to have an 11 year old catcher throwing out her arm throwing to 3rd base!

Yeah, I didn't completely understand that one either, and I stood there staring at him like he was from Mars.

I think he was referring to another of my games when the catcher kept throwing the ball to 3rd to stop my runners from stealing from 2nd.

Here's my issues with the first half of his comment:
If these were boys, you would never hear anyone complaining that you are teaching them too much too soon!!!
 No one would ever say, "Oh, poor boy, he is going to throw out his arm, cause the other team keeps trying to steal the bases...."
These girls are in the Major League. They need to learn the game before they get up to the Junior League(13-15 yr olds). Junior League will eat you alive if you don't know how to play.

The boys in the Major league are OOOBER competitive.
So are their coaches. But Heaven forbid you teach these girls too much too soon!
Cause, for sure, they don't want to know how to play!!!

By the way, I've not had one parent complain to me that I am teaching them too much too soon.

Sorry, this is long and all my audience of 3 will quit reading my posts, cause softball isn't your thing. It's a mental thing, it helps me sleep after such an exciting night.

My assistant coach, that always gets in yelling matches at these games, was out of town, so I had Hubby help me base coach. Funny thing, he knows the umpire. Hubby works with his brother!

I was bouncing more than Kinzie was all the way to In n Out! Bouncing the whole time we were eating! Bouncing the whole way home!
It was a good game even if we had lost, which I knew we were going to.


Okay, I tired enough to sleep. Yay!