We came into game 12 in high spirits, despite losing Monday. We stayed in that game and played hard, so we didn’t get down.

Our opponent was the Oakdale Royals. We played these guys in the Summerfest tournament, and they beat us 8-2. We were looking for a payback game, and the Royals were fresh off their first loss of the season, to the Maplewood Hooks, a team we beat already this season. So we knew we could beat them.

We didn’t. The Royals batters were on fire – their coach said they had not had a game like this in weeks – and their pitchers were as well. The few balls we managed to put into play found fielders waiting for them.

Alex started and had his worst outing of the season, giving up 7 runs in 3 innings. I think he doubled his run total for the season in this game. At that, he did the best of our pitchers; the Royals were relentless at the plate, 7-running us in one inning and coming close in another – 6 runs in and bases loaded with two out when we finally managed to close out the inning.

We managed to keep from being shut out, but that was all we could pull off.

The best part of the game, though, was that the guys didn’t get down; we came to bat in the bottom of the 6th (and final) inning trailing by 20 runs, and I could hear Luke Pasiuk shouting “Let’s score 20 and get back in it” from the bench all the way over at 3rd base. The whole team was on their feet, cheering on their teammates at bat in the final inning. After the game, Tyler said “that was a fun game” and he actually meant it.

Yeah, we got beat, and beat bad. But we got to play baseball. And we’ll get ’em next time.

Final score: Royals 21, Ironpigs 1

Season record: 9-3

Still no word on when our playoff games are; I’m hoping we don’t play Monday or Tuesday because I’m out of town and I don’t want to miss a game.