 |
| The Titans battled, but came up short at the annual Hluboka Spring Cup. |
We were down five of our regular starters and had to rely heavily on three of our junior guys (17-18 year old's) to step up while playing in the annual Spring Cup in Hluboka, which is just under two hours southeast of Prague.
Then three guys get hurt, one gets sick and we're forced to toss our starting pitcher from our third game of the weekend - who is also our emergency catcher - behind the plate and have our catcher, who had already caught three games over the weekend, pitch the final five innings of our last game. Oh, and to top it all off, we had to pencil in our old, never-had-a-prime head coach (me) to give us enough warm bodies to fill out our lineup card.
Toss in some rainy conditions and maybe a few hangovers after celebrating one of our player's birthdays on Saturday night, and everything pointed to a disaster in the making.
That, however, would not be the case. As I told our guys today, sometimes the most dangerous animal in nature is the wounded animal. It has to focus on what strengths it has remaining, and use those strengths to find new ways to defeat its opponent.
Our guys took to that to heart and battled, and after splitting our two round-robin games on Saturday, we breezed through our semifinal game to get to the final. There, we put up a good fight against a team that we'll play against in the Czech's second division this season, Sokol Hluboka, before falling, 4-0. We had our chances, including having the tying run at the plate down three runs in the sixth (games in the tournament were seven innings), but weren't able to come away with the one clutch hit that would get us over the hump.
Nonetheless, I was proud of my guys this weekend. After a shaky day on Saturday, they fought on Sunday and we went out on a good note despite not reaching our goal of winning the tournament. Our junior guys we had with us this weekend - Eda Suchanek, Richard Jarosik and Vaclav Koci - might not get as many opportunities during league games like they did this weekend. But they showed that they'll be ready to get out there and compete if they do get another opportunity.
I think our team will have plenty of confidence when we see Hluboka in a few weeks for a league doubleheader at our place with a full and healthy roster. In the meantime, I have a feeling we've got a bunch of guys who are sleeping soundly as I type this at 12:30AM after a long and tiring weekend.