Baseball tonight

Moriah's team has had a losing season. It's been hard on her to have so many losses, but I keep trying to get her to understand that they have a pretty good team. We've been focusing on complimenting her (and her teammates') skill and hits and fielding...they are comparable to most of the teams they've played and should be very proud of how well they've played overall. It's the lack of enough good pitchers/pitching that typically turns the game into a loss, when batters are walked and walked and walked....

Tonight was game two of the 'championships'. The first bazillion games they played (three games a week made it seem like millions of games) were all 'exhibition' games. (???) Now, the games this week and next week determine the 'champions', I guess. Tuesday's game wasn't that big of a loss. We were actually ahead and doing really well. Then the pitching got us and we ended up losing. Tonight was the same story. We had pulled ahead by two and then truly lost it with the five runs that were walked home. Sigh. (I promise I'm not such a downer with Moriah... I really am proud of their team.)

So, onto a couple of highlights in Moriah's game tonight:

Moriah very nearly made an out with a close call at first--she thought she had gotten the kid, who needed to be tagged, but the ump didn't see what she saw/felt and called him safe. Although it wasn't an out, she did very well with the play.

Then, she was part of a double play. The second baseman caught a pop fly and Moriah realized the guy on first had gotten trapped off base. She called to her teammate, caught the ball and tagged him out as he was returning to first. I got to giggling because she had made an extra out--the pop out was the third out but she didn't realize it. I was proud of her for being cognizant of a good play and the two players executed it perfectly. Moriah was proud of her fourth out, too.

Finally, at her second at-bat (first at-bat was a strike out while looking), she took a good swing and hit a solid single to left field, bringing in two runs. She had put them ahead and was very pleased with herself. I looked across the field at her, blew her a kiss and got a huge grin in return.

I'm pretty sure I've said it here before, but it bears repeating. It is a pure joy to watch her play baseball. She can get caught in a negative spiral of 'yuck' if a game isn't going well, but for the most part she has a fantastic time. I'll share a photo that one of her coaches took on Tuesday night:

She sure is something to watch!