And just like that, it is done

Great game by the guys tonite. I'm proud of the effort, and I am happy it was a team effort. See this space in a day or two for my year end commentary, I am going to just keep it to tonite's game for now.

Ed got us started out, and gave up a couple hits, but then pitched himself out of trouble. But he started the 2nd with 2 walks to the 7 and 8 hitter. My tolerance for walks is not very high, especially when we had 4 experienced pitchers ready to go. So I brought the hook. I like that he didn't get mad or pouty, and just accepted his new role in the outfield.

Cody doesn't throw hard, but he throws strikes. So I thought we should give that a whirl. And Cody gave up a couple hits, but our defense bailed us out, as well as a Royal interfering with CJ making a play. Cody then gave up a hit on his first batter in the third, and we did not allow a base runner for the remainder of the game. The next 12 batters (and last 12) were retired in order. Awesome! Cody proved you don't have to throw it fast to get outs. You need to throw strikes, and have your defense help you out.

Well they did get one base hit in there, but thanks to a well executed play we got the out. A Royal hit it out to Schmidtty in LF, who did his job, promptly fielded the ball, and got it to his cutoff man Grant. Grant saw the runner had overrun first, so he quickly whipped it to Jerald, who applied the butter on the toast for the 7-6-3 putout. That was the most excited I was all year. Just awesome job by those 3 guys.

Again the defense did well. Our pitchers only had 7 strikeouts, meaning 11 times we got outs in the field. There were a lot of dribblers to the pitcher, so that worked out well.

On the offensive side, Jerald got our first run on a weird mental breakdown by the Royals. Jerald had a hard hit ball, then through the wickets of the CF, then Jer advanced to 3rd on a wild throw, and then he jogged home when the Royals decided the ball was poison, and decided to just stand and look at it instead of fielding it. Then Grnat, CJ and Will all punched runs across. Everybody got out at least once tonite, but CJ, Jerald, Grant, and Mickey all got on at least twice, via one method or another. Of the 15 times they got us out, we struck out 11 times tonite. Our hitting wasn't as good as I was expecting it to be, but we got the hits when we needed them.

And just like that, it is done. It's been a good run. And like I said before, come back in a day or two, I want to make some commentary on the guys. I don't think we will have a year end party. I'd really like to only have it if we could have everyone there, and with summer and all that, that is going to be about impossible. So maybe we can come up with something, but it is not looking good.

So again, great job everybody, I am just pleased as punch with this team!