All-Star Baseball

I have to write down what is going on with the U-12 Simsbury All-Stars baseball team before I forget. Hopefully Quinn can read this 20 years from now and have some very fond memories!

The roster was:
Quinn, Drew, Nicholas, Joseph Gugliemino, John Flammini, Alex Pepper, Jacob Williams, Jake Godwin, Kyle Flynn, Nolay Hussey, Gianni Marchetti, Chris Paolella.

Coaches were: Mark George; Matt and Steve Paolella.

So far their record is 4-2. The regular season the record was 3-1, with the only loss being to Canton. In the playoffs, we lost to Avon in the first game at Sperry Park. This was the game that had several questionable calls by the umpires...for example, one of our kids was safe at third, until the manager talked to the umps and they changed the call to out, even though the ump admitted he couldn't see the play! That was just one of several shaky calls. The good news is that we went on to beat Avon last night to get into the D6 championship game!!

The team had great success playing at the Terryville field. We beat Torrington on Tuesday July 5 to advance to the playoffs. This was a great game for Quinn. He started off rough making errors at shortstop, and I was getting worried. In the third inning, our team was down 10 runs and we were figuring out how not to get "mercied," let alone win the game. Quinn came in as a relief pitcher with no outs in the inning. He got us out of the inning with no more runs. Then, Simsbury proceeded to score a run or two of the next couple of innings, finally blowing the game wide open in the fifth. Tri-town went through about 6 pitchers. At this point it's like 10:45 at night. I had no worries that Quinn would have the mental toughness to finish the game! Simsbury wins!

After the first playoff loss to Avon on July 8, the team went back to Terryville on Mon. July 11 to play Tri-town. We had beat this team earlier, in fact "mercied" them, but the coaches knew this game could be much closer. Drew pitched this game, and the score was 3-3 after 3 innings. "New game" for the fourth inning. Simsbury started scoring runs and went on to win the game by a pretty wide margin. Quinn closed out the game in the sixth inning. Another win!

Last night Simsbury played Avon in Harwington. Weather was sunny and breezy. The sun was bright and it looked like to was difficult for the outfielders to see. The wind was blowing out and I was very worried that Avon was going to hit some home runs pretty easily. Kyle is on the mound for Simsbury. The game starts out close...2-1 Simsbury after one inning. Quinn had an awesome lead off hit. (We are the home team, so we have last ups). Quinn is at shortstop and it seems like every ball is coming to him hard. There's at least one where he doesn't make the throw to first in time. Then, a rocket comes at Quinn and he gets a ball in the side. He says he could see the ball mark. He's doubled over for a couple of minutes, but is ok. Also, Matt is all fired up because there was a bad call in the first inning...the catcher blocked the plate and one of our runners was out. Matt goes nuts and yells at the ump. But the ump says "you can't talk to me." and Matt settles down. This may have worked in our favor later on, because later we have a runner at third base who is called out. The umps have a talk and the home plate ump overrules his call and the runner is "safe!" back at third. The score is 5-1 after 3 innings. All our players are hitting! Gianni, Chris, Jacob and Jake all hit the ball well. The score becomes ____. You can see that Kyle is getting tired, and Avon is hitting against him, so it's great we have this lead. He makes it through the fifth inning (barely). Quinn is pitching in the sixth. We get two outs, but are struggling. There's guys on base the the score is now 10-6. Coach takes Quinn out and puts him back at shortstop. Jake Godwin is in to pitch. I believe Avon gets one hit. Then, a grounder comes to Quinn and he throws it to Gianni at first to make the last out of the game!! Simsbury wins!!!