April came and went rather fast, with lots of rain and cold temps, but we made it work. Evan's coach ended up having them play in three tournaments the past three weekends in a row and they had their first league game as well. Their first outdoor tournament came before we even had any outdoor practices. We did the PG Spring Opener tournament at Canton Sports Center. There were some good teams in the tournament! They won 2-1 against the Canton Cardinals (a long-time rival), lost 17-1 to Novi Heat Gold, and lost 11-6 against the Northville Mustangs. Evan pitched during the Novi game for an inning (none of the kids pitched well that game and the coach had to switch pitchers many times). Overall, Evan had two hits and two walks for his 6 at-bats.
The following weekend, we were added to a tournament last minute down in Monroe for the SMARTS Spring Fling. All games got rained out on Saturday, which made Sunday an incredibly long and cold day. The wind was terrible. We had to be there for the 10am game, then we had a break to be able to grab lunch out and warm-up, and then we played again at 2pm. We won both games, which had us as the number one seed going immediately intro bracket play. We beat the Oakland Reds 4-3 and Dagda 16-0. We played again at against Dagda (the 4th seed) and they saved their best pitcher for that game. We somehow lost to them 7-4 and got knocked out of the championship game. To say the kids were bummed is an understatement. Evan had 1 hit and 1 walk out of 7 at-bats. He hit a bunch of ground outs.
The following week was our first league game against a Hit Dogs team that one of our teammates from last year went to and Evan also knew a few other players from previous years/teams. Evan was the starting pitcher and pitched almost two innings with 3 strike-outs and 5 ER. He had two walks and two hits with 4 at-bats. They won 18-7.
That weekend the boys played in their first officially scheduled tournament in Garden City, The Kerwin Classic. We've never played in that tournament before, but it sells out every year and is super popular with the local teams. We had our first game Friday night during pretty steady rain. We got 2 innings in and they postponed the game until Sunday morning at 8am. We were winning 4-2 at that point against another Oakland Reds team (their top team). Saturday, we played at 10:45am against the Livonia Hawks and it was an intense game 0-0. The umps made a terrible call against Evan where we should have had a run scored, but they took it back. Then, the other team said we made an illegal line-up. Long story short, our coaches forfeited the game causing us to lose 6-0. We had a game later that day at 5:50pm against LCB Legends and lost 8-4. We finished out game Sunday morning and ended up losing 14-5. So, we had a consolation game later that afternoon against Hitmen GCAA and won 13-0. Evan pitched two innings and did amazing! He had 6 strike outs against 7 batters! He was on fire. Overall, he had 2 hits and 1 walk out of 7 at-bats (not counting the game we forfeit).
This hasn't been the smoothest start of a season, but I'm hoping it will improve as the season goes on. We have a ton of games to play! Evan's not hitting the best that he can right now, but that's baseball. Slumps are a real thing. In the meantime, I hope he's having fun and enjoying the time with his team! He'll get there!
