Game 2

After a big win yesterday, we traveled to Namur (to the Walloons)/Namen (to the Flemish) to finish off the weekend set against the Angels. Namur looked like a beautiful city that I would like to go back and explore a bit, but the sugar coating for the day ends there. To put it bluntly, today was a miserable day of baseball.
Unlike yesterday, when we rallied from behind to win, today we played uninspired baseball that was deserving of the 13-2 thumping we suffered. For starters, it was about 40 degrees out, the wind was howling, we got rained on a little bit at the beginning of the game and there was no sun to be found. Mix that in with some poor pitching, costly mental errors, and bad at bats and that about sums it up.
The sequence that changed the game went like this. Ground out to the pitcher. Ground out to short (or somewhere else). 2 outs on 3 pitches and we are in pretty good shape down only 2-0 early... or at least temporarily. Walk. Walk. Walk. Bases loaded. Hit batsmen. Hit batsmen. Error. Walk. Grand Slam. Now it is 10-0 in the 4th, rather than 2-0 and the game was well out of reach.
Perhaps the worst part of it all was that Namur played what I feel like was bush league baseball. At one point, their pitcher stepped off the mound and yelled at our batter to stop looking at the signs, which he wasn't doing. As a pitcher I know how annoying it is when batters peak, but there is a way to handle it the right way and that wasn't it. On another play, when there was no play at the plate and the ball wasn't even in the infiled, their runner slid and took our catcher out. When our coach came out to say something about it, their coach started going after our catcher for standing around the plate. There is no if, and, or buts about it... it was a cheap shop. As if the game couldn't get any worse, they lay a base hit bunt down up 11-2 in the bottom of the 7th. The next kid hits a home run, and does a spin move before touching the plate and I was told later a backflip, rubbing the win in our face. Individually, each of these things got me a little heated and collectively even more so. Losing sucks, losing bad sucks even worse, and losing to bush teams is the worst. Lets just say that I took down a few numbers for the next time we play these guys and look forward to whooping up on them.

I finished the day 0 for 2 with a BB and a run scored. In my first plate appearance I got down 0-2, then worked it to 2-2 while fouling of 3 or 4 pitches, but my good battle was for not, as I got jammed on an inside cutter I was trying to foul off and was thrown out at first. In my second AB, I lined the first pitch in the left center gap, but it hung up too long and was caught. AB 3 I walked and scored, and I was left on deck in with 2 runners on in our team's final frame.

All in all, a loss is a loss, but I hope that next time we win game one of the weekend series we play game 2 like we smell blood rather than as if we are content with just winning 1. For now, its time to lick the wounds and get ready for a big series against the Yankees of the Belgian 1st Division, the Hoboken (not NJ) Pioneers.

To end on a positive note, we went to Maaike's parents' house for dinner and the food was delicious. We chowed on a version of Beef Burgnion (spelling?) made with 5 kg of beef and 1 kg of bacon. And as if my heart wasn't going to stop already, we had what else but some homemade frites (fries) and a delicious banana tart.

Tomorrow Reid and I are off to Brussels to explore...

Until next time... keep it classy