4-6 but on the way up

We’ve already reached our second off day and we’re only 10 games into the season. Two off days in 10 games is almost unheard of. I did hear someone say the other day that after this off day we go 27 straight days without having an off day, so it all evens out.

Our team has gotten off to a slower start than I would have expected. We’re sitting at 4-6 right now after taking two out of three from the Sarasota Reds. Our first series of the year we played the Palm Beach Cardinals. We share the facility with them so whenever we play them we have two home games and two “away” games. After beating them nearly every day in spring training they promptly took three out of four from us when it mattered. I got my first start the third game at first base. I ended up going 1-4 but I hit the ball hard every time up, all those hard hit outs always even out, right dad?

For our second series we headed west a couple hours to Fort Myers to play the Minnesota Twins affiliate. The Miracle play their games in a really nice stadium with an even better playing surface. Our first game ended up getting rained out so the following day was filled with a double header, which we split. This series was dominated by 2007 first rounder Ben Revere. He always seemed to be getting on base, followed by stealing a base, followed by scoring a run. He helped them to take two out of three.

Our final series of the road trip was in Sarasota, which is the home of the Sarasota Reds. Sarasota is also where Scott is honing his craft. We ended up taking two out of three, mostly due to our man child Mike Stanton catching fire. Sarasota’s facilities and town aren’t nearly as nice as Fort Myers, it’s no wonder the Reds will be moving out to Arizona next year to a new spring training destination. It was great to see Scott again and see how upbeat he is being about his whole situation. We at together a few times and we realized that it has been since high school that we had seen each other play. There’s a likely possibility that when he comes back he’ll start in high a and I could very well end up facing him. Everyone always asks us if we’ve ever faced each other and the answer is always no, but that very well could change in a couple months.

I can already tell that our team is starting to make progress in the right direction. The first couple series we played a little uptight and it showed with mental mistakes and costly errors, but the effort was still there. The more everyone gets back into the routine of playing every day the more everyone will be performing to their upmost potential. The two main things that have hindered our performance as a team up to this point has been our hitting and our ability to close out games. If you were to ask anyone on our team, they would tell you that these two things will be two of our stronger areas when it is all said and done.

For me it’s been an all right start. Numbers wise I haven’t had a great start, but I’ve never really been a great starter. I’ve put together some good at bats, haven’t struck out a lot, and have hit quite a few balls pretty well. I’m not one bit worried because I know how long of a season it is and I know how even keeled you have to be to be successful.

Well that’s all I have for now, I’ve got to get going to make an eye appointment that I already missed once last week. I’ll try to blog again in a couple days to give a little more insight into life in the Florida State League.

“A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward.” –Jean Paul