Game 1

The Red Sox played their first game on Saturday against the Rangers. We faced a tough adversary in the Rangers who had two very good pitchers and a team full of hitters. On the positive side, I thought our boys played very hard the entire game and we were able to put the bat on the ball more than a few times against live pitching. Jack Coughlin had a real big hit to rightfield that got all of the fans out of their seats on the sidelines. I think all of our pitchers did very well given that it was the first time any of them had ever pitched in a real game. As these kids have more opportunities to pitch in live-game situations, we will see improvement in their accuracy and consistency. We also did a very good job at catcher with the Ben and Roberto platoon (great job guys). Areas that we can improve on include our fielding and our hitting. We recorded only one out in the field over four innings (excluding strike-outs) and it was the last out of the game (good catch Ben). We missed a lot of ground balls that were hit to our players and we need to concentrate a little harder on our throws to first base. A key thing to remember about fielding is that the longer it takes us to make three outs, the less time we will have to bat. I don't think we made it through our entire batting order twice, because we spent so much time in the field. Also, I was surprised to see that we struck out 10 times in the game. We have a bunch of very good aggressive hitters on our team and I'm sure we will see these numbers improve. I want to thank Teddy for keeping score, James for helping run the bench and Greg for umpiring, prepping the field and working in the snack bar (leader for the Dad of the year award). We will need similar help for the bench and field each game.

We now face three games in 6 days (Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday). We need to make sure the kids are ready to play when the game starts. I know it's difficult to make it to the weekday games ahead of time, but we need to try. Please show up a half-hour before the games so we can get warmed up and walk through some pointers before the game. Thanks again to the kids for their effort in the game and to the parents for helping out. See you on Tuesday.