In past years, Alex’s end-of season tournament has been on the last weekend in July. This year, there are 22 teams in the A league (despite being the Maplewood Athletic Association, there are only 3 Maplewood teams – we have 2 from Little Canada, 5 from North St. Paul, 5 from Roseville and 7 from Oakdale). This means that the playoffs started on Monday night.

This also means that I missed game 1. I scheduled a work trip to Los Angeles about a month ago, figuring that I’d miss a practice. Oops.

When the game started, I was in the Phoenix airport, waiting for a connecting flight to Burbank. As it turned out, the airplane was delayed – some kind of maintenance thing – so I got to follow the game via text message. The plus was that I was sitting in air conditioning, instead of out on the field in 95-degree weather with a heat index well over 110. I’d rather have been there.

We’re the 6th seed in the tournament (out of 12 teams in the “American League” bracket of the A league – with 22 teams, the playoffs were split into two sections), so we faced the 7th seed, the Roseville Giants. This is the team that beat us 12-3 to start the season. Christina says they came in feeling kind of cocky, probably because they beat us before. That changed fairly quickly.

Alex started and gave up a run in the top of the first, with the defense making some good plays behind him. We came to bat in the bottom of the 1st and scored 7, and that was pretty much the game – the Giants realized that they were going to lose and gave up. Alex settled down and cruised through two more innings, and we put at least one run on the board in every inning. The Giants came to life in the later innings, as everyone was getting hot and tired.

Final score: Ironpigs 14, Giants 5.

Tournament record: 1-0. We’re playing on Sunday, either for the championship or for 3rd place.