Tag Archives: Northwest Austin little league

Mr. B., whose Cub Scout den received their Wolf patches at last night’s last Pack meeting until the annual July 4 neighborhood parade, before they begin as fledgling Bears in the fall, will have to hustle to get his homework done this afternoon. He needs to be at practice at 4:30 before his Scrappers take the field an hour later for their third playoff game. Win this one, and they move to the Northwest Little League AA8 championship game against the Rockhounds on Thursday. Can they do it? We could say, along with Bob the Builder, Yes They Can. But in a world where there’s a 50-50 chance of a play or an error, it would be safer to just cross our fingers and hope for the best.

UPDATE:  They lost 5-3.There were lot of tears from the Scrappers who were angry about some bad calls. But bad calls have gone in their favor before. This time there were just too many errors, and too many strikeouts, in addition to the bad calls. So their season ends in the semi-finals. Mr. B. moves on to "tournament ball" next week, but we have yet to learn what that will entail.

Mr. B.’s Little League team won its first playoff game this afternoon, beating the Diamond Jaxx 4-3. He hit a double in the third inning and scored the second run. But he struck out his next time at bat, ending the inning with the bases loaded. He swung the bat into the ground, reminding me of some famous pro baller’s remark (I wish I could remember who), that the worst thing about baseball is to strike out looking. At least Mr. B. went down swinging. If the Scrappers win their next game on Saturday… Well, better not to get ahead of ourselves. Today’s win was their first in four games, after all.

They kept striking out. There was also the spectacle of four players converging to catch a pop fly before it fell on the ground. So they lost to the Lookouts, 5-0. Mr. B. did stop a grounder before it added to the score. That’s three losses for the season so far.

The Scrappers lost the kid-pitch exhibition game to the Lookouts, 8-3, but Mr. B. got the game ball for a timely catch of a pop fly while playing shortstop. He also got a good hit and two called strikes when he was pitching for the first time. Some of the kid pitchers were quite good, throwing called strikes over and over again. Bright, warm and windy day. I got sunburned.

The Scrappers’ 23-run winning game Wednesday might be the last high scoring one now that kids are replacing the coaches at pitching. Mr. Boy did well in practice pitching, so may get a chance at it in tomorrow afternoon’s game. He even survived getting hit in the back yesterday by another kid pitcher while batting in practice, though he cried a little. The kid pitchers are a little wild and they’re throwing as hard as they can to get the ball over the plate. Which is why I think the high-scoring games are over. Now the challenge is for the hitters to stay in the box and swing. Several yesterday were antsy, stepping backward every time a kid pitcher delivered. Going to be interesting.