The Artful Dodgers played perhaps one of their better all around tournaments ever, but didn't have the results to show for it. They've had tournaments where they went 3-0 on Saturday and they even won Division 2 playoffs in Summer Ball, but this is one of the only tournaments where they played good ball in every single game. All the games were close and all could have gone either way. However, this is slo-pitch and sometimes the bounces just don't go your way. Personally, I think this should give the team a boost, knowing they can hang with just about any team in the league (aside from Finger Monkeys).

I've always said that if you have to lose, as long as you lose to a fun team, it's not so bad. Except for the last game, all of our opponents were at the very least unassuming if not outright fun to play. All I will say is teams should really make sure they have a firstbaseman/woman who knows the rules and doesn't try to shift blame or make excuses when he/she screws up and nearly hurts an opposing player as a result of their incompetence. If you want your claim of protecting the incoming runner from a bad throw, two things need to be true: the throw needs to actually be bad (if you can catch it with your foot still on the bag and you didn't have to stretch at all, the throw was good enough) and you should take a step towards home plate (keeping your body between the ball and runner) and not towards the first base dugout (unless protecting her means tripping her so that the ball flies safely over her as she's falling).

Oh well, they can't all be gems, now can they? Still, it was a great tournament and I look forward to the final two weeks of fall ball.

OT