Monday, June 30, 2008

Raiders Invitational Part Deux

Sunshine, friendly people and softball - what more could you ask for on a Sunday afternoon?

Ten wolves made their (sometimes meandering) way to Wandsworth Common for the second of the mini-tournaments organised by the Raiders. This time the Raiders had put together two teams (Tea and Coffee) and invited along the Meteors as well, so it was three games each on two pitches.

The Wolves started off with a good strong win against Raiders Tea before deciding to mix up positions and try a few things out in the second match against the Meteors. Before we knew it we were 10-0 down! Much as we like to practise and experiment, we also like to win (now that we've got a taste for it) and it was back to our normal fielding positions for the rest of the match. From then on we started to field much better, and some great hits particularly from the lads notched us up a few runs. Olivia's fantastic catch in the outfield has to get a mention - even though they 'bought it back'. We took advantage of the very same 'buy-back' rule to make Alison bat again in red devil horns, and before we knew it, it was 'tied ball game'. Up we went to bat, and I was very exicted to find myself on base and in the position of being the 'winning run'. Despite Matt's comments that I 'run in slow motion', I made it around and victory was ours for the second time that day.

Off we trudged to the other diamond for the last proper match of the day. Another closely run game sadly slipped away from us and when time ran out we were down two runs. However, it was certainly worth it to see Kevin batting in bunny ears after we bought back this strike out.

As we all know, you can never have enough softball and so on we played - this time Raiders against the rest of the world. I'm not sure anyone was scoring all that closely by this stage, but I think it's safe to say that the Raiders won. Loads of people had a go at pitching and even with a ridiculously long batting line-up it was great to have a few more swings.

A hugely fun afternoon, topped off with the traditional trip to the pub - just for old times sake.

2 comments:

Kevin Wilson said...

Yeah, we played really well in all three games, especially the Meteors game. What I remember from them scoring 11 in their first innings though, was they hit a lot of safe and slightly lucky shots, which they never got away with again. And one of their big hitters was out twice in a row after they used the "buy back" rule.

It was great we got to try different positions and so on. And I felt I rediscovered my batting form on a more personal note.

Andy said...

Sounds like a great day, with some great play from the Wolves!