That's the case for the 2011 Mudcats after an elimination game loss to the Scrappers. It felt very swift and very sudden, and there were some glum faces in the All Blacks dugout as the outcome became clear. Coach Andrew, though, gave it some good perspective in the fifth inning. "There are only three teams left playing baseball right now," he said. "Do you know what your friends on those other teams are doing right now? They're doing homework. Or they're cleaning their rooms. And we are having fun playing baseball."
And it was an incredibly fun season. Remember, this was a team that lost their first three games of the season by a combined score of 29-17 and basically had to figure out how to win again after a rough fall campaign. By the end of the year, they were one of only three teams to defeat the regular season champion Thunder and one of just three teams still standing on the Wednesday before Memorial Day.
A series of postgame bounty awaited the 'Cats, including Doritos and Oreos for everyone courtesy of JJ's grandparents and a double money fairy that meant double treats at the concession stand. As usual, there were cakes for coaches, plus envelopes that contained instructions on how to tactfully let umpires know of their mistakes.
The defeat meant the end of the Minor League careers for seven stellar eight-year-olds who, fittingly, made up the first seven hitters in Wednesday night's batting order. They included:
Anthony Alberghina: No longer known as "Red Hot," Anthony picked up the nickname "Hoover" from Coach Sean late in the year. The reason is simple: the second baseman with the softest hands in the league gobbled up everything on the right side of the infield. Not surprisingly, he earned the postgame season-long Doritos award as the team's most reliable defensive wizard. Anthony and his family will be incredibly missed as they prepare to make the move to Alabama.
Hayes Anderson: Somewhere deep in Hayes's soul, I think there's a Carolina fan trying to escape. Consistently the Mudcats' most dynamic baserunner, Hayes ended the season with 11 hits in his final 13 at-bats and made himself into a very solid outfielder who just might possess one of the strongest arms on the team. Hayes and his family are planning a move to Texas, but hopefully will return at some point in the near future. With their first pick in the 2013 draft, the Mudcats select Grant Anderson.
JJ Chapman: I don't know what it was like to be there for Kirk Gibson's home run in the 1988 World Series, when Gibson memorably exulted on his way around the bases. But I'm not sure I'll ever forget the look of sheer joy on JJ's face when he rounded the bases on Tuesday night after blasting a sixth inning home run over the right-center field fence. When he threw his arms out to the side and broke out in a wide grin between first and second, it was the perfect illustration of why we as parents spend all those hours out at the field. I believe it was Coach Jim who noted during fall tryouts that JJ was "raw with potential." He converted that potential into production over the fall and spring seasons, becoming one of the All Blacks' most consistent hitters, a dangerous baserunner, and a rock-solid outfielder.
Drew DiMeo: Drew is the reason Asher is playing in West Raleigh. His influence and example are the reason Asher loves getting ready for every practice and sits in traffic on I-40 on weekday afternoons. That's also why Asher remembers his sixth birthday for the following reason: "That's the day Drew hurt his arm." The day after the injury, I remember Coach Andrew saying he thought Sticks could start taking some swings one-handed in a matter of weeks. I also remember thinking, "Yeah, sure," and then a couple weeks later, there was Coach Andrew firing in fastballs to Drew, who was blistering them one-handed into the outfield. In all the time that he missed with his injury, I never heard him complain about having to sit out--but I did see him doing a lot of work to come back and play with his teammates again.
Christopher Gruskin: It floored me over the winter when Coach Andrew told me that Christopher actually hadn't been playing first base all his life. After watching him do it virtually flawlessly in the fall, I just assumed he'd been playing first base since t-ball. By the end of this season, he'd trademarked his own play--"The Christopher," in which he fielded a ground ball and then dove to slap the bag before the baserunner could get there. As the parent of a "little kid," you always watch to see how the "big kids" treat him. Christopher was the kind of respectful big kid I'd want Asher to be when he gets as big as Christopher...which will probably be around the age of 14.
Zach Hurand: I kind of wish I could be Zach for one day, just to see what it's like. In the fall, Coach Andrew kept telling us about this big kid who would be back for the spring, a kid named Zach who was still learning the game. I didn't know what to expect. What we got was a prototypical slugger who blasted 11 home runs during the season (he received the season-long Oreos award), including a two-homer, five-RBI night on Tuesday (by the way, he also was steady on defense both in the infield and the outfield). Despite all that success and despite the fact that his awed teammates constantly begged him to, "Hit a homer, Zach!", I never once heard him brag. The closest he ever came was Sunday, when I got to the game late and missed one of his homers. I arrived in the fifth (he'd homered in the first), just before he walked out to the on-deck circle. "Did you hear what happened in the game?" he said with a small smile. Somewhere, the Boshamer Stadium fences are nervous about what Zach might do to them in a few years.
Jacob "Smiley" Mitchell: Midway through Tuesday night's win, the Riverdog third-base coach was watching Smiley work behind the plate. He threw off his mask and pounced on a ball slapped off the plate that eventually trickled foul. "Whoa," the Riverdogs coach said, "that kid knows what he is doing back there." I'm not sure how it's possible that Smiley could simultaneously be one of the fastest players on the team...and always consistently even faster than you thought. At pitcher, he covered a wide swath of the infield from first base to third base. At catcher, any foul pop that didn't reach the fence was his ball. Through all that, I never saw him without a smile on his face.
The defeat also meant a major turnover in the Mudcat coaching staff and front office. Those coaches who will also move up include...
Coach Jim: A hitting guru, Coach Jim was the master of quietly--but educationally--offering that last-second tip in the dugout that translated to a base hit in the batter's box. Watching coaches from other teams berate their outfielders provided a nice reminder that his relentlessly encouraging defensive coaching style quietly made the Mudcats into a better team in the outfield.
Coach Rob: There was a period of about two weeks in the fall when I wasn't sure which player was Coach Rob's son. That's because he treated every single Mudcat exactly the same--like a proud dad. I remember pulling into the West Raleigh parking lot at the same time as him in the fall and suddenly being startled by a shout from our backseat, as Asher shouted, "There's Coach Rob!" with outright glee. That tells me much more about Coach Rob than Smiley's batting average (which was astronomical) or how many games the team won this year.
Coach Andrew: I think it was roughly two years ago that Coach Andrew first told me about West Raleigh Baseball. It sounded to me like the people involved might be a little crazy. Now I know that's obviously incorrect. They are definitely a little crazy. And even though Coach Andrew spent endless extra hours working on his team, I never got the sense that whether the team won or lost defined how he felt about the players on his team. We won, I think, two games in the fall. And right through the final team event of the season, he talked about how much fun he had with that group. This season, when a makeup game was scheduled at the same time as Drew's birthday party, I wondered what he might do. There was very little hesitation--we had the party and cut pregame short.
In a league where some teams take two-hour (or more) pregames, that's the kind of coach I want coaching my kid when he's six years old. I want him to teach my kid how to win, but also how to play and have fun. No kid has ever gotten burned out on baseball by having too much fun on his team. When I told Mike Fox, Carolina's head baseball coach, about the rigorous practice and game schedule in West Raleigh, he gave me a grim and skeptical look. "Is Asher having fun doing it?" he asked. As I think back on the fall and spring seasons, I have absolutely no doubt that Asher had fun, and that's a credit to the head coach.
GM Jenn: Late last fall, Stephanie and I were having a conversation with two other parents from our team. We were new to the league and thought we had somehow fallen into the major leagues. Awed by the precision and organization involved with a 6-8 year-old baseball team, we asked, "Is it like this on every team?" "I've heard that it's not," they said. "I think there's a big difference in playing West Raleigh Baseball and playing Mudcats baseball."
Much of that difference is due to Jenn. She's the one who battles for the practice slots that make sense. She's the one who lets us vote on the uniforms. She's the one who shows up to the field 90 minutes before the game with enough food to feed a school cafeteria, and then stands and hands it out between every inning. She comes up with the nicknames and sends out the emails and knows the name of every parent, grandparent and sibling by the second practice of the year. She is, in many ways, what holds the team together.
I'm not quite ready for it to be over, even though it's been a long season. In the next couple of days, we'll be sitting around in the afternoon wondering what we're going to do, and it will seem like it should be time to get in the car and drive to West Raleigh.
Asher was mostly quiet tonight on the ride home. He didn't say much about baseball. Just after tucking him in and just before walking out of his room, though, he did have one final comment that answered any question about whether he had fun as a member of the 2011 spring Mudcats.
"Daddy," he said, "when are the opening ceremonies?"
Wednesday's Mudcat scoring plays
First inning
Extending his streak to seven straight times on base in the leadoff spot, JJ reached on a hard-hit ball to left-center. Hayes followed with a bullet double down the line, putting runners on second and third for Drew. He came through with a two-run single to right, giving the Mudcats the early lead and with one swing marking the most runs the 'Cats had scored this year against the Scrappers in regulation.
Score after one-half inning: Mudcats 2, Scrappers 0
Second inning
This time it was the second half of the order producing a run, as Gabe drove in Charley with an RBI grounder.
Score after one and a half innings: Mudcats 3, Scrappers 2
Fourth inning
With one out, Zach lined a single to left. Christopher followed with a single to the left side, and Anthony lined an RBI single up the middle. Smiley's RBI grounder completed the scoring for the 2011 Mudcats.
Score after three and a half innings: Scrappers 6, Mudcats 5
Wednesday's Web Gems
- Smiley grabbed a line drive at pitcher in the third, then alertly fired to Anthony, who as usual was heads-up and covering second base, for the double play.
- Zach went deep in the hole to glove a grounder that appeared to be ticketed for left field and then threw to first to get the out. The runner was eventually pulled out of the dugout and placed on first base.
- In a league where catcher is sometimes a spot to "hide" a weak player, that was never the case for the Mudcats. They got consistently good play from all three of the players who spent extensive innings behind the plate--Charley, Gabe and Smiley. In addition to being responsible for all plays at the plate (which the All Blacks nearly pulled off on Wednesday), Coach Andrew also charges his catchers with maintaining the tempo of the game and the awareness of the infielders. Late in the year, especially, Gabe and Smiley developed into solid leaders for the infield.
| Wednesday's line score | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | R | H |
| Mudcats | 2 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 7 |
| Scrappers | 2 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 3 | X | 12 | 12 |
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