For our first game of the season, we faced the Cardinals. We’ve seen some of these guys before – one of the players, Jake, was on our team a couple of years ago – but there were plenty of new faces. The Cardinals have a lot of 6th-graders, like we did last year, and as we saw last year, there’s a bit difference between 11-12 year old boys and 12-13 year old boys. I think our players averaged about 4 inches taller than the Cardinals.
We scored 7 runs in the top of the first inning and hit the 7-run limit, ending the inning with no outs. Every batter we sent to the plate got a hit or a walk, and once our guys got on base, they ran with abandon, since the A league fields feel tiny to them after playing middle school ball on regulation-size fields. The basepaths that Alex, Lucas, Luke, Marco, Anthony, Sam and Steven were playing on were 90 feet, and the A league is played with 75-foot basepaths.
As we were coming off the field, I heard the Cardinals coach trying to rally his guys, who were a little shell-shocked by the top of the inning, to “get the bats going.” Unfortunately for the Cardinals, they needed to do that against Alex. He proceeded to get three quick outs, two with strikeouts, and we scored 5 more runs in the top of the 2nd. Alex made short work of the Cardinals in the bottom of the 2nd, giving up a walk but getting two strikeouts and a nice fielding play by Steven on a soft liner to right.
We scored another 4 runs in the 3rd to make it 16-0, and then we really put the brakes on base-stealing. The Cardinals managed to shut down our bats so we didn’t score another run, but we didn’t need to. Marco and Luke finished the game, giving up a run each.
Final score: Ironpigs 16, Cardinals 2
Season record: 1-0
Last year not only the height difference but the puberty difference between our sixth graders and the seventh graders we played in that first game was shocking. They weren’t only taller, they were broader, with manly faces – and we were still fielding a team of little boys. This seems to be the most awkward point in the league – where a smallish sixth grader is physically around nine or ten and a largeish seventh grader has the physical build and strength of sixteen.
Yeah, when I saw the guys this year, I was shocked. Alex had grown a couple of inches over the last year, but since I see him every day, I hadn’t really realized it. Seeing the other guys was when I realized they were all bigger, and then when we went up against the first team in the jamboree, I realized how MUCH bigger.