3 November 2021

Day 3 began with a virtually cloudless sky over Port St. Lucie. After a quick brekky it was off to the tent for the day's morning meeting and awarding of the brown and gold ropes. 

The brown rope went to my teammate Tim Heaney. Tim has just started a new job and really needed to be on a mandatory zoom call with his new employer. So he missed the first full inning of our second game. I was penciled in as the 10th batter in the order, but that changed immediately and before I knew it I was running to the plate as the game's second batter. It nearly worked to perfection as I didn't have any time in which to overthink the upcoming plate appearance. I laced a pitch down the third base line and was thrown out by a step by Rob Ranellone. The rookie who is age 40, 6'4"/235 lbs and looks like he stepped off of the cover of GQ magazine. But I digress.  The gold rope went to my friend Jim Forde who tossed a complete game and had a heck of a day overall. 

After our morning stretches we were off to our first game of the day. We got down early and stayed down, unfortunately. We put together 10 hits but couldn't seem to place them in clutch situations to produce more runs. Two of the hits were by yours truly as I went 2-for-3 with a run scored. But we dropped our fourth straight game by a score of 7-3. 

During the lunch break we learned that we would be playing our next game at Clover Park. We had not yet had the opportunity to do so. So I was way psyched. I went with the actual stirrups and then added the late-70s era Puma black shoes with white logo stripe. I was as retro as I could possibly get. We once again gave up two runs in the top of the first frame, but scored one of our own in the bottom. We fell behind 5-1 going to the bottom of the 4th. Chris DiLorenzo, who is still unable to run whatsoever, hit an inside-the-park homer to close the score to 5-3. But in the 5th we mounted a rally. Rob Gambardella singled to right and with one out I came to the plate. I swung through the first pitch and then took the second pitch for a ball. So now, I'm looking to just get a hit to continue the rally. I did exactly that when I absolutely crushed the 1-1 pitch to the left field corner, probably close to 300 feet from home plate. I legged it into a triple and gave virtually no thought to trying to extend it to an inside-the-park homer, a la Mr. DiLorenzo just one inning prior. Josh Thole told me drop a gear and coast into third base standing up. I was ecstatic. I needed something that would be a positive contribution to my team. My rbi triple was the start of a 7-run rally that put us on top by a 10-6 score. In the bottom of the 6th Russ Bruno, who also played baseball at the University of Tampa, but many years after myself, tripled to darn near the exact spot that I had. It was a great moment for the two of us because he knew I'd been pressing prior to my triple and here we are, UT alums, adding to the team's success.  The final 7 half innings saw runs score before we finally got the 21st defensive out some 3 hours plus later. it felt really good to get a W this afternoon and we hope to ride this wave into tomorrow morning.

The Kangaroo Court was this evening as well. We had a guest speaker in Terry Collins who had us all hanging on everything he said. We learned that over $3,000 was raised from the casino night last evening to be donated to the Hope for the Warriors charity. There's no telling how much was raised tonight. I do know that the legendary Bobble Ed Moore paid $1500 for a Steve Trachsel limited edition bobble head doll. Some of the rookies got caught for wearing hats when the judges Wine and Flynn were making their entrances.  

A good time was had by all in attendance and we all look forward to tomorrow's games. Today's first round playoff games produced an upset as the #1 seed lost to the #8 seed. This could end up being reminiscent of a couple of camps ago when all of the top 4 seeds lost in the opening round. The championship ended up being something like the 6 seed versus the 7 seed. This only shows that any team, when playing well in consecutive games, can win this thing and the ring that goes with it. 

Another day is in the books. The week is FLYING by. Playoffs games for those teams who won this afternoon's games with the rest of us playing in the consolation round. The championship game will be played tomorrow evening at 6 p.m. at Clover Park. Many of us will go to that game to watch our friends duke it out for the bragging rights that go with the championship win. 

While I was playing first base today I thought that if this place were a scene from "Field of Dreams" and Shoeless Joe Jackson asked me if this were heaven, my response to him would be, "You could say that, Joe.  You could say that".

Until tomorrow. Talk to you then.