The Best of the West?

I once heard it said that baseball is all about managing failure. Where else could you be successful only one third of the time and still be considered an all-star?

Well, this weekend was a learning experience for our Redline team. To date, we've been in four tournaments, going to the championship game in all of them, coming away as the champions in one. Our team has been relatively successful, seeing the majority of breaks that come in every game go our way.

Well, not this weekend.

We played in three games this weekend, losing every one of them. In all three games, we had the lead, clicking on all cylinder, only to see the game lost in a single inning of futility. It was like everything was going well, and then in a single inning you could see it all beginning to slip away. Once the lead was gone, we went flat. Unable to regain the momentum we needed to win, the game slipped away. We lost both our games on Saturday night, first to the OCBA Barons, 9-7, and then to the OC Twins, 5-4. We came back this morning and proceeded to pick up where we left off, losing to the Huntington Beach Vikings, 6-5. Tough, tough loses.

Josh played much like everyone else. He has some stellar plays at first base, but had little at the plate to show for the effort. He hit the ball hard, once flying out to the left fielder on a drive that must have been about 275 feet. He ended up going 1 for 5 with a double, an RBI, and scoring a run.

Looking back on it, it was a good learning experience for the team. They need to know how to handle adversity.

Like it was once said, they need to learn how to manage failure...