Play Ball!

We may be a week late, according to the schedule, but we finally kicked off the Assumption High School baseball season today! The Royals are taking part in a Spring High School Challenge at the Wildwood Sports Complex near Mauston, Wis.

No, that is not super green grass. It is turf! They've got quite the complex there.

With four baseball fields, they have four divisions in this weekend's round-robin action, while 16 teams are taking part in a similar tourney in the adjacent softball fields. Due to the turf surface, they can play rain or shine. Our guys can't wear their metal baseball spikes, though, so that is why Carter has his "regular" athletic shoes on. They just happen to be red (our opponent's colors). 

It thankfully didn't help Thorp any.

Our team had some pretty decent hits for its first game. Good to see we are getting on top of things early in the season instead of mid-season. Carter got to start for varsity, which is a step up from last year when there were so many boys on the team that he and seven other freshmen were often in the dugout -- except for a handful of JV games.

He got four at bats today. First time, he hit a hard infield grounder and made it to first but the guy on third got the third out trying to get home. So that counts as nothing.

His second time up, he hit a great shot out to left-center. See the photo above? I got the ball launching off the bat. Unfortunately, it had too much hang time so the outfielder was able to catch it. Dang. His third time up, he popped up a mile-high one that the catcher managed to snag. Dang again.

The promising thing was that we were leading and he did advance a few runners. So that was good.

His last at bat he ended up getting walked, then stole second. We got three outs before he could score, but I was glad he was at least contributing. The main thing was that he was actually swinging AND hitting. That took awhile last year before he got into that.

We had a sizable lead and almost lost it in the last inning but our defense held off Thorp and we won 7-5. Yay! The win plus nice enough weather made for a great season opener!

Tomorrow, the Royals will take on Greenwood and Bruce. There allegedly is 70% chance of rain. The fields drain quickly so the boys will play no matter what. It will just be a matter of us spectators remembering the old standbys -- blankets, mittens and umbrellas -- just in case.

Play ball!