Weekend Series against the Stars

Howdy partners! Another weekend and another series done. Wes wept the Stars in 2 games straight. Game 1 score 9-7. Game 2 score was something like 15-8 and was the longest game ever. Reminded me of a classic Yankees vs. Red Sox game. Not that it was a good, quality game but because of the amount of time. In all fairness, it was a boring drawn out game but we got the win.

Game 1 we were up 8-1 going into the later innings but then they came back 8-6. We ended up winning 9-7. We haven't been playing up to our potential a lot of mental mistakes and walks. Finished the game 2 for 5 with a double and 3 RBIS.

Game 2 we were losing 4-0 going into the 2nd inning. We ended up coming back little by little and then put a 5 spot up in the middle innings. This game was literally like closing on to 4 hours it was so long. Hot day also about 90 degrees.  Out pitching staff gave up 16 walks!! And our defense had a couple errors. I made one of those errors in the later innings on a routine slow ground ball right to me. We ended up scoring 15 runs but against a good team we would have gotten crushed. I ended up being 3 for 6 with a triple and 3 RBIS. We play Tuesday and Wednesday against the 1st place Pioneers, should be fun :) haha.

Well as much of you know the USA World Cup soccer team was 'beat' by Ghana last night 2-1 in extra time. I watched the entire game and I was not impressed with USA. We looked flat and were taking really bad first touches. Our defense collapsed twice which resulted in 2 goals. Thought Howard should have made a better effort at the 1st one but not his fault. We beat ourselves. Two great scoring chances and we shoot right at the keeper within the 18 yard box...unacceptable! Maybe in 2014 we won't shit the bed in the round of 16. The Yankees lost last night 9-4 to the Dodgers. We won the 1st game in the series though! If you watched the game you know A.J. (Yanks pitcher) is in a hugeeeeee slump! He has not made it past 4 innings in his past 3 starts! He better figure it out after the All-Star break. Plus I have him on my fantasy team, which indicates my awful record and why I am in dead last with no hope of moving out! Check back in a few days to see how we do against the Pioneers. PS I will be home soon for good!!!! Can not wait to be back in the dirty dirty Jerz!! Cheers mates :)

European Qualifier

Hey everyone! It has been a while since I have posted anything but I wanted to wait until after the Qualifier. If you were following the live stats online you know that we placed 2nd and lost in the championship to the Czech team. It was a cool experience to play all different countries but I was not impressed with the level of play from all countries but Czech. The competition was not very good at all. We played well for a young team though and lost in both games to the Czechs 7 to 2. Not a bad showing but wish we would have won it. Played a solid shortstop but only hit .250 for the tournament. Common theme was that I could not buy a hit if I wanted to, but that is baseball :). A wise man once told me that all hard hit balls to fielders will even out eventually with little bloops, but I am still waiting to see that haha. We still have 6 regular season games before the break in July. We are sitting in 2nd place right now behind the Pioneers and hopefully we stay right there. Our next two games are Saturday and Sunday this week so after those games I will have another post.

We don't get much news over here about America and if we do I can not understand it because it is in Flemish or French. What I do know is that the US soccer team is about to hopefully clinch a spot in the round of 16!! Go USA!!! Also, the oil continues to spill into the beautiful Gulf of Mexico killing the wildlife. If Bush were still the president everyone would be blaming him for sure, which I find amusing haha Tiger is still having problems winning after the whole cheating scandal and apparently blamed his caddy for his recent loss!! He said his caddy told him the wrong club, but excuse me Mr. Woods aren't you the pro and have the last say??? Hmm...Go figure! His caddy, Steve Williams, from New Zealand is the highest paid 'sports star' there. His salary is a whopping 1.3 million (around) dollars!! Shit, I will hold a bag of clubs and tell Tiger which one to use for that kinda cash!! In all seriousness, that has a lot of pressure and stress in that career. Well that is my up to date news....NOT. I'm sure there is a lot of more interesting things going on like the start of the Cape Cod League this past week, but you all will have to settle for this. Tune in next week for another exciting, hold you on the edge of your seat update! Cheers mates!!! :) PS comment below if you feel moved to discuss, debate, or chat!

Washington Nationals STEPHEN STRASBURG

Well just like the rest of the country I wanted to write about Stephen Strasburg, the rookie pitcher for the Washington Nationals. Last night was his Major League Debut against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Before watching the game and his highlights I had mixed feelings about him.  There has been so much hype about this kid. Yes he tore up the Minor Leagues, but that is a huge jump from there to the Majors.

I was excited to see how he would pitch and his composure. He did not cease to amaze the Nationals fans and baseball fans everywhere. He recorded 14 strikeouts in 7 innings pitched with 2 earned runs on 4 hits and 0 walks. Even though it was against the Pirates who have a team batting average of .236, it was still a professional team with big league players. He had a veteran-like composure about him. I was impressed and am interested to see what he is going to do this year and in the future. This will be an exciting kid to watch for sure! :) Anyways, regardless the Yankees will still win the World Series this year and make it number 28 baby!! :) Cheers!!

Update this week in 1st division baseball

Hello from Belgium!! This weekend my team, the Royal Greys, had a bye. We played a scrimmage game against the Antwerp Eagles (2nd division team). We won and it went well. The game was not serious and we played it because we have our European Cup qualifiers coming up. They start June 14th. The European Cup means the best teams from all the countries play in a tournament. Unfortunately, last year my team got kicked out and as a result did not make the A pool this year. Instead we have to play in a qualifier and if we win that then next year we will be back with the top teams in Europe (Door Neptunes, Rimini Pirates, FC Barcelona just to name a few). The countries in our qualifier are Austria, Czech Republic, Greece, Croatia, and Serbia.

We are the favorites with Czech Republic, so hopefully we can win it all! I am going to put the link to the Euro Cup Qualifier page on here.

http://competition.baseballeurope.com/2010/antwerp/schedule.php

That is the link and from there you can watch live stats as my team plays. We have a game every day Mon-Fri and playoffs are Saturday. On the top of the page you can see stats schedule standings and on the right side it says live. That is where you can watch the games. Every game we have is at 6 o'clock PM. Stay tuned and I'll post another blog right before we start on June 14th. Thanks for reading and hope everyone is doing well!! :)

Jim Joyce's controversial call on a legit perfect game

What up homies??? I just wanted to write a short blog on Jim Joyce's (the 1st base umpire) controversial out call on the 3rd out of Galarraga's perfect game last week. He obviously blew the call and admitted after the game he took a perfect game away from the kid. I thought it was great that he admitted that he messed up and apologized. What I wanted to write about is the question that is being debated right now, should the MLB institute instant replays??? 

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand baseball has been a sport that doesn't aways exactly fit in with 'modern' sports, due tot he fact that there is no instant replay. It has an old time feel because every call is up to the umpires discretion. That is the human element in the game and I think it is great. It makes baseball a game and i think instant replays on all close plays would take the fun out of the sport. It would also drag out the games and make them longer, which is bad because some think baseball is too long already. The only solution I could think of is to institute instant replay for cases like this or in the World Series where a blown call could mean losing or winning the World Series.

The picture above is the play that Jim Joyce got wrong. As you can see he is obviously out and Galarraga would have had a perfect game. My question to all of you is what do you think about instant replays in the game of baseball? Please leave your comments below :)

 

Fall when it is Summer time

Hey everyone! Just wanted to point out that the weather here is the worst weather I have ever seen. All it does is rain an it is cold here! It is June but feels like October! Anyway now that that is out of the way here is the update for the last 4 games.

Tues and Wed of last week we had a series with the number 1 team in the league, the Hoboken Pioneers. They were undefeated coming into this series. The first game we faced their American import Josh Neitz who used to play in the NY Yankees organization. He is a very good pitcher and a nice guy. Kev Mac pitched for us (the Aussie import) and had a good game striking out 10 and keeping them to a 1-1 game going into the 6th. There you go Kev, your shout-out. They were winning 5-1 going into the later innings. We ended up taking the lead 8-5 at the end of the 8th inning and the game, finally, was called due to darkness. We handed the Pioneers their first loss of the season. I ended up going 1 for 5 with an RBI in that game. The second game was a different story. Our pitching staff walked 14 batters! Our defense made 4 errors! It was by far our worst performance of the season and the Pioneers won easily 9-3. I went 1-4 in that game. finished 2-9 for the series, not my best games.

The second series we played was this past weekend against the 3rd place Spartans. This team is compiled of Dominicans and Venezuelans, which are great ball players. We won the first game 12-5 in a pretty easy win. We played solid defense and Dennis gave us another chance to win a game with him pitching. I went 3-4 with a couple RBIs and some plays at shortstop. Game two was another cold rainy day. It seems that everyday is a cold rainy day here in Belgium but that is besides the point. We came out flat and unenergized. We made 3 errors and walked a lot more people than we should have. Our team as a whole just did not want to play. To make it worse, the umpires put on an awful display. The base umpire made 4 wrong calls at 1st base resulting in taking 4 hits away from us. One of them was with me and I almost got thrown out of the game when I told him he was an F-ing idiot and he made the wrong call. He did not seem to like that too much Haha We ended up losing 9-1 in 9 innings. It was a very bad game. I went 1-3 with the only RBI of the game coming in the 9th inning. 

Here is the link to the league's official statistics for the season.  

http://www.frbbs.be/statistique.php          

Click on 1st division baseball to view them. The picture above are my current stats up to date. :) Hope everyone is doing well!!

May 20th Weekend Games

Hello to all 3 people that probably read this blog haha This weekend we had the biggest series so far for our season. We swept both games. Game 1 we faced a Japanese import  who has gotten all this publicity about being a candidate for the Italy and Holland leagues (best baseball in Europe). We beat him 3-1. I went 1-4 with two RBIs and a few nice plays at SS.

Game two was a littttttle different. We won 19-2 in a long drawn out game. We played solid defense, good pitching, and obviously a ton of offense. I went 2-5 with a double and had an error at SS out of the 6 plays I got. Good team win and we needed to win two. That puts us at 10-2 overall and in sole possession of 2nd place behind the undefeated Pioneers!! We face the Pioneers this upcoming Tuesday and Wednesday. Hopefully we can take at least one from them and give them their first loss of the season.

In a side note, at today's game a swarm of like 2,000 bees almost attacked us while in the field. I have never seen anything like that in my entire life! i was playing SS and heard this loud buzzing (I thought it was a plane flying overhead). I turned around and saw a dark cloud of a couple thousand bees flying in like attack formation right over my head heading towards home plate. I thought i was going to die haha I hit the deck and watched as they flew over me in unison and continued on to their unknown destination. I do not know what would cause a hive of bees to leave their nest and fly like that but I was scared to death. anyways check back for a rare mid-week update as we face the number 1 Pioneers! :) Cheers everyone!!