KC Dodgers

Last night (Monday night), the K.C. 13 year old All-Stars rallied back from a 3-0 deficit to take a thrilling 8-4 come from behind victory against a tough Deer Park team. Tonight (Tuesday night), a disciplined, tough, very talented NASA team gave K.C. a taste of its own medicine, turning a 3-1 1st inning K.C. lead into a 15-3 drubbing in the finals of the PONY Directors Tournament. First, five items of good news about tonight's game. #1 - Nothing that occurred on the field contributed to the depletion of the Earth's ozone layer. #2 - None of our K.C. players ended up in the hospital. #3 - We got to see Coaches Glenn, Bob and Jack dressed up in their spiffy uniforms once again. #4 - The mosquitos weren't biting too badly and a refreshing breeze was blowing in from center field. #5 - We don't have to go back to the far east side of Houston anytime soon. Now for the not-quite-so-good news. NASA scored lots and lots and lots of runs. Some of them were due to the fact that several K.C. pitchers who threw on Saturday, Sunday and Monday were not available to pitch on Tuesday. Some of them were due to disappointing execution by K.C.'s usually steady defense in the field (six unearned NASA runs resulted from six K.C. errors). Three of them were due to the fact that the NASA pitcher, who was somewhere between the Hulk and a solid rocket booster in size, launched a high inside fastball over the left-centerfield fence INTO a fairly nice breeze. NASA scored one in the first, four in the fourth, seven in the 5th, and 3 in the 6th. Defensively, NASA committed only 2 errors the whole game. Their right fielder threw out 2 K.C. runners at first base on what would ordinarily have been hard line drive hits. K.C.'s runs all came in the first inning. Ross Chan got an infield hit . Colin Bear walked. Paul Knowlton was hit by a pitch. Pat Brosch drove in 2 runs with an RBI single. Grant Haynes drove in a run with a fielder's choice. And that was about it for the K.C. offense, which could muster only 2 other walks and 2 scattered singles throughout the remaining 5 innings of the game. Next on tap for the K.C. 13 year old All-Stars is the USSSA Tournament in Boerne, Texas, this coming weekend. Everyone who knows anything about this team knows that the K.C. 13's will learn from tonight's experience and emerge a better, tougher, more confident team as a result of it. Congratulations to the K.C. 13's on achieving FINALIST status in the 2003 PONY Directors Tournament. We are all very proud of the fact that K.C. finished second out of 28 teams in the district. We look forward to the opportunity to show NASA how we have improved when (or if) we meet them in the upcoming playoffs. That's all for now. This is Scott Rothenberg signing off.