Baseballin' Brock

A pensive man gets ready for the big game. 

Don't worry, he smiles too. 

I'll apologize right up front for the lack of pictures in this post. As the first base coach, I watched most of the games from right here, and I rarely ever had time to pull my phone out. But I snuck one in right here. The park we played at had an amazing playground next to the field, meaning Alice would usually pull Holly over there for most of the games. So again, few pictures. 

This was Brock's first season of full-on kid pitch and he did great.  He pitched in 3 games, and although he walked a few too many batters, he got his share of strikeouts and the improvement in his arm strength was impressive. He spent most of his time in the infield moving between 2nd and shortstop, and was great at stopping everything. The most impressive improvement Brock made this year though was his hitting. 

Through the course of the regular season, Brock went completely hitless. Not one single hit. He made some good contact and drove a few balls, but they always went into gloves. He hit into a few fielder's choices as well. He was great at taking walks too, but you could tell it was getting to him. In our last practice of the regular season, the frustration reached its limit as he failed to make contact once during coach pitch batting practice. It was tough to watch. Head coach saying "ok, this is the last ball" for about 10 balls in a row just trying to build his confidence as the rest of the team is like, "c'mon already!" 

The thing that made me proudest was that Brock came home from that practice not discouraged, but determined. He asked me if we could carve out some extra time in the mornings before work and school to go to a field and work on hitting. So between the regular season and the playoffs, we completely tore down his swing and rebuilt it from scratch. And the balls started flying. 

In three playoff games, Brock went 4 for 8 from the plate with two triples, a home run, and 2 walks. This translates to a batting line of .500/.600/1.375 (batting average, on base percentage, slugging percentage). For reference, Barry Bonds hit .471/.700/1.294 in the 2002 world series, in arguably the greatest world series performance of all time. 

Just look at the focus. (yeah, you caught me. this is just my only picture again, but zoomed in) 

The championship game started as poorly as possible. Their ace pitcher struck out everyone in the first two innings and they put up 7 runs against us. The team was devasted, heads hanging low. We tried to remind them of great comebacks we'd made before, and how they had to replace the crazy good pitcher now (kids can only throw two innings in this league) but they would not be inspired by platitudes of mere coaches. I pulled Brock aside and told him, "You are up. New pitcher. Your team really needs a spark here, let's try and put a smile on their face." Of course, he laced a triple to right field. 

He never made it home, and we went on to get crushed 10-0 that game. (For those unaware, Barry Bonds' team lost the 2002 world series too. One man simply can't do it all.) Thankfully, our memories are selective, and I'm sure that fact will fade away like the details of civil war battles learned decades ago. Instead, Brock will get to relive a glorious last inning comeback in the semis, the feeling of being mobbed at home plate by his entire team after blowing the first playoff game open with a home run, and the confidence of knowing that all his teammates are turning to each other saying, "don't worry. Brock's up." 

Ha! Holly here. I took a few pics from the final game while Alice was deep in Gabby's Dollhouse...

Brock doing some genuine fielding.

This was on his actual hit!

Second place also gets a trophy. He was delighted.

Go Jaguars!