Thursday, Apr. 07, 2005
Game 2, Year 2, posted at 10:50 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com Tonight's version of happiness was getting in a complete seven-inning game before the rains came, winning (a lot, over 20)-(a little, under 10), and getting all 19 of my suited-up players into the action. The baseball oasis at behind the school where they like to set fires was just as I remembered it - a tranquil reflecting pool in the middle of the ghetto. Even the trash, omnipresent at all baseball fields in the city, was kept to one tiny area behind the homeplate fence, so you could just stand in front of it and look out at the field and think you might be in Iowa or something.My left-fielder, a kid who is just a sophomore but could pass for 28 (last year, the kids made jokes that we were college roommates), was caught stealing at third base. The thirdbaseman, not a skilled player but one of the team's best, kneed my kid in the head on the slide. It was a clean play - he was blocking the bag, and "Nic" had barrelled into him in a slide - but Nic was pissed. He doesn't get angry often; he's a happy-go-lucky kid for the most part. But he stared that third baseman down like Cabrera did in the O's game the other night. I grabbed him and put my arm around him and led him away from the field, but he wouldn't stop staring. The next at-bat, he hit a triple. The one after that, he hit a three-run home run. That's vindication for you, even though the play was clean, and I told him that over and over again.
The team has a lot of depth this year. I feel like I'm two deep at every position, and pitching looks pretty good. I pitched each of my top four pitchers today - a three inning stint for me ace, then single or double innings for the rest. I saw a kid I've never seen pitch before in a real game, and was duly impressed with his striking out the side and not walking anyone. The kid who got our first victory last year (in game #6) looks to have rebounded from mechanical difficulties in practice early on, and pitched two scoreless innings. Then, in a thrill, I saw the little brother of a kid I coached for the last three years pitch the last inning. I cut him last year, but kept him this year, and he looked like a left-handed version of his big brother (who is now a freshman at UMD). But his uniform was so big on him that he looked like he was straight out of the 1920s. He threw strikes and looked good.
Anyhow, we're 2-0 now. Next week is three home games in a row on Mon-Wed-Fri, including big games on Wed and Fri with our two chief rivals. That will be the true test.
Leaving at the asscrack of dawn and getting back at 8:30pm is the status quo this time of year, and I'm pretty happy with it, but it took me over an hour to plan tomorrow's lesson just now, and I'm sure I'm going to have whiners ask me if I've graded their essays or figured out grades yet as soon as I walk in tomorrow. Still, the busy-ness is worth it, and it sure feels great to open the windows at night. Tomorrow will be a quiet night, a marathon of The Wire at a friend's house, and that's the extent of the weekend plans.