I ran across this post on the blog of Kevin Nishinaga, who was picked up by the Bay Area (Team Pape) Pirates to play in the Best of the West tournament over the weekend. Kevin had signed on to get our Twitter feeds, and I discovered his blog. I think you will enjoy it, as I did, and perhaps recall that feeling you got when invited to travel out of town and play in your first tournament at the “next” level.
REAL pitchers
I went to my first softball tournament of 2009 this weekend, in Santa Barbara. Turns out it was a really high-level tournament, almost out of my league. This was the Best of the West tourney , featuring some of the top teams in the Western US. The pitching was amazing.
The team that picked me up for the weekend, the Bay Area Pirates:
I’ve been playing with and against a lot of these guys in Hayward and in travel league, so they picked me up as an extra player for this weekend. Another guy they picked up just for the weekend was BJ Hunhoff, a 20-yr-old out of South Dakota. He’s a nephew of one of our other pitchers (who couldn’t make it out this weekend due to a work emergency), and he pitched for Team USA in 2007 (maybe currently as well?).
Our first game, we played the Black Sox of Long Beach, and won 8-0. I was the designated runner. It’s a special rule in fastpitch, where a single player is allowed to pinch-run once EVERY INNING. It’s a pretty cool position, cuz I get to steal and run the bases a lot. I’d rather play in the field and hit, but DR is the next best thing for sure. I stole 2 bases and scored like 3 runs in game 1. [edit] Our catcher Ricky was HOT with the bat, so I kinda turned into his personal baserunner this weekend. [end edit]
Second game, I DRed again, against the Columbia River Rockers (out of Portland) and we won again 9-0. BJ no-hit them. That was kind of ridiculous, cuz they’re a good team, I think.
Third game, I got to play the field against Santa Cecelia from Mexico. the manager told me that the pitcher had a good down ball, which would play into my strengths (slap ground balls and beat them out), but he didn’t tell me that the pitcher was ex-Mexican national team pitcher Panfilo Valdez. That guy’s up and down movement was ridiculous. I struck out 3x (couldn’t even get close on bunt attempts), and we got shut out. We lost on 2 unearned runs. I got to make 2 plays at short.
But overall, day 1 was great. we scored 17 runs and only gave up 2 in our 2-1 day, so we picked up the #2 seed in the day 2 single elimination bracket. Great showing for a team making its first appearance at a big tournament like this.
Day 2 was exciting the whole way. We faced the Black Sox again in the first game, and won a nailbiter. They got ahead early, but we battled back to pull ahead with 2 dramatic solo home runs in the late innings by Josh and Ryan, and we won 6-5. I was 1 for 2 in stolen base attempts (DRed again).
In the second game of Day 2, we faced Innovative Communications of Utah, and we got down early again, but we battled back to tie, and were tied when time ran out (90 mins), so we went into the International Tiebreaker rules (start extra innings with runner on second base). Unfortunately BJ had to catch his flight home to SD, so we had to pitch our second pitcher Keith (who was quite good). Keith pitched well, and Jabari threw out the lead run at the plate, but eventually some minor miscues led to a 4-run inning for Innovative, and we lost 8-5. I was unable to steal any bases in this game because the catcher was an ex-minor league baseball player and had a rocket arm.
All in all, we were very happy with our showing in the tournament. Due to scheduling miscues, the champion was crowned in a really awkward way — only 1 out of the top 4 remaining teams was able to stay (the rest had to catch flights home to Utah, Colorado, and Oregon), so Taylor Farms of California was declared the champion.
It was a great experience, to see some of the best pitchers in the world, live. Got to watch Jeremy Manley do his thing. Hopefully someday soon I’ll be able to compete at that level. Until then, I’ll keep plugging away in rec league.
