Bye, bye, bye

Yesterday I neglected to mention some of the fashion statements which are sometimes made at MFC. I'm old (school) myself. I miss the days of actual stirrups being worn. I remember seeing "stirrup socks" for the first time in the 80's on a Game of the Week telecast with Joe Garagiola and Vin Scully. Joe was none too pleased to see this and commented on it briefly. Gone were the days of uniforms that were far too "fitted", as players like Jose Cardenal of the Cubs complained that his uniform pants were too large. George Hendrick of the Cardinals was probably the first player I ever saw wearing ankle-length pants. But when I play these days I typically go with the long ones as well. 

But this is Fantasy Camp, and I like to break out my old school stuff. On Monday I went with the stirrup socks. After the second game Rajai Davis saw me outside the clubhouse and said he liked them. I said to him, "wait until tomorrow." He just smiled and nodded in the affirmative. 

So yesterday I busted out one of my pairs of real stirrups. They're not as new as they used to be but they sure look good. I pointed them out Rajai at the morning meeting and he totally dug them, especially when he saw that in addition to the stirrups I had on my '70's era Reggie Jackson black Puma cleats with the white stripe and the flap on top. He loved them! Special shout-out to John Finn who also was sporting the authentic stirrups yesterday. Heath Bell looked at the shoes and said, "I think I owned those". They looked good as my team won a pair of games in anticipation of today's games. which went as follows:

 For the first time this week I opened my drapes to see that it wasn't raining. That meant that the prospects for at least the morning games were good. I arrived at the complex to learn that the morning meeting had been scrapped in favor of games starting at 8:45. The top four seeds, which included Touch 'Em All, had received byes for the first game. This gave our team some free time. Time that we didn't use wisely, apparently. 

We took some batting practice and made walk, as a team, down to field 1. We got ourselves ready for the start of the game against the Tallywhackers. Due to weather constraints the games today were only to be 5 innings in length. Only moments before the first pitch of the pitch was thrown there was a question about if our opponents really were our opponents. We lost about 5 minutes, but eventually got back to our task. 

We actually jumped out in front in the first inning, but we turned around and gave up a 4-spot in the second. Following that the game was a struggle and we just didn't produce at the plate. We really were playing not to lose, as opposed to playing to win as we had in the first four games. 

Gary Peterson pitched well as we managed to eke out only three hits on the day. And then, it was over. Our championship run had come to an end. The 5 inning format was a killer. Coming into the game we'd scored 61% of our runs in the 5th inning or later in our first four games. So now we play out the string and have some fun.

Tonight was also the annual Kangaroo Court, presided over by Messers Wine and Flynn. It was a laugh-filled 75 minutes to be sure. The fines handed out were doubled by an anonymous party which are donated to Hope For The Warriors, so it's all worth it. 

The team store at Clover Park was open tonight before the Kangaroo Court, with 50% off all of the merchandise they had on display. I have far too much Mets clothing and such back in Minneapolis, so I only picked up a couple of things. 

The plan for tomorrow is to stay with the published schedule. The weather forecast is bad, but we will play the hand which mother nature deals us.