Bad News Bears

Does baseball get any more exciting than at the Little League level? I don't think so. My eight year old son William was on a team this year that only won 2 games out of 13 (or was it 16?) during the season. Then tournament began. The first game was scheduled the same night as our church's annual father and son campout (which they wouldn't miss for the world) so we were a little disappointed thinking he wouldn't make what would probably be the last game. They were playing a team that had easily beat them before, but somehow they pulled off a win with some pretty amazing plays from the accounts we heard. We were thrilled! We could make the next scheduled game so we were happy, assuming once again this would be the last game. That's when it started to get exciting. All the moms were up and out of their chairs actually cheering and getting nervous for once. I couldn't help but remark to one of the moms, "this was a lot easier when we always lost". I thought I was going to have a heart attack each time my son was anywhere near the ball. We won THAT game which then put us into the championship game against a team that had only lost ONE game during the season. They had handily beat us badly two times. What you have to know is that our coaches and our parents were all about just having fun and making sure all the boys had a good experience. Our coaches would give everybody a shot at all sorts of positions even if we were losing - they were really great guys. So now we are in the championship game against a team that was known for being fairly competitive. It played out like a movie right down to the huge, red headed son of the tall, good looking coach getting a homer every time he was up to bat. I'll make a long story short: by the last inning we were winning 1-0 and they were up to bat last. There had been so many strike outs and outs at first that only one run had been made the whole game so the other team was pretty excited to have two on base. There were two outs. My blood pressure was going through the roof. I thought the mother of the pitcher would pass out. There was only one more boy up before the red headed son of the coach. Can you imagine the pressure on that poor kid up to bat? He did manage to hit the ball, but they got him out at first and that was it! The A's, the losing-est team in the Pinto's 8 league won the championship! It was classic American Little League and my son was on cloud nine! (It wasn't too bad for the "fans" either.)