We finally got in a spring training game. Weather has been pretty abysmal throughout March, and none of our scheduled games took place. With all the rain we got yesterday, I wasn’t sure when I went to bed whether we could play today. Fortunately, we could. It was still cold (around 10 °C or 50 °F), but the sun shone the whole time, so it felt nice enough.

I’m in a different team this year than I was last year and I’m playing in a league at one level down. The alternative was to play one level up, because we won the championship last September and earned a promotion to a higher league. I think I’ll have more fun at the lower level, so I opted to switch teams.

I was back at my favourite position for the first part of today’s game: shortstop. It looks like I’ll be playing there most of the time this year. I’ll also spend time on the pitcher’s mound, either in relief, or as a starter if our regular guy is unavailable. I pitched the last two innings today to get some game vibe at that position as well. The results were mixed. I allowed one unearned run the first inning, but my control took an early exit and I could hardly throw a strike the second inning. I’ll have to work on that.

On the offensive side, I wasn’t faring much better. I was too eager in my first at-bat and went fishing on a slow 1-2 pitch for a third strike. I hit a grounder to short the next two at-bats, both of which got booted by the shortstop for a reached-on-error. I ran into another strike-out my last time up when I couldn’t check my swing on a high 2-2 pitch. That came after fouling off four pitches, so combined with the ground balls, the good news is I’m seeing the ball and making contact.

The competition starts next Sunday. This one spring training game will have to do to be ready for it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 6th, 2008 at 21:04 and is filed under Baseball, Weather. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.