Nashville USA

BIRTHDAYS

Senior softball traveled to Nashville for a tourney last weekend and when I heard that Andy and Bryan would be there for their birthdays I was so happy to meet up with them on Friday night.
We met them at Rippys rooftop restaurant and had some good grub (pulled pork pizza - YUM)

Then we head down to a honky tonk - Second Fiddle
It was old - smokey - loud - cold draft beers - PURE country
and I loved it!!!


Let me tell ya the "Cougars" were out and when I got Bryan up on the dance floor they all stared at us and thought that I had scored.
The only thought that was going through my mind was if that is what my bowling team looks like when we went out and then I realized that I was the only one of cougar age.

We tried to get back down to Broadway on Saturday, their actual birthday, but softball interfered.

SENIOR SOFTBALL

The teams first game was scheduled for Friday morning at 9:00, but with the rain the night before all games were bumped to the afternoon. They ended up playing only one game against a team from Indy at 1:00 for their spot in the bracket. They won and were placed in the fourth slot out of 10 teams. Saturday morning they beat a team at 9:00 from TN.
The kids showed up for the afternoon game. (Some of them dragging from the night before). Mike was very excited to see them.


The people running the tourney thought it would be a good idea to get one more game in on Saturday because the weather called for rain that night. Our last game was scheduled for 5:15. OK - we still had time to play, get cleaned up and go down town to meet the boys for a birthday drink.
HAHA - Our game was against a team from Atlanta and we could of driven down there to play the game and made it in time. We started on one field that the lights were sparse and after one of our guys took a lined shot to the head we protested and they moved us to yet another field, but we had to wait for that game to get over.

Centerfield had only one light working

Their game got started at 9:45. Yeah - we sat around for 4 1/2 hours. And they were playing a Major team (we are in one lower division, Triple A) Needless to say the guys were NOT in to playing any more. They lost.
The first game on Sunday was against the last Triple A team in our bracket and they beat them soundly. We had to play the Kaysons from Atlanta again for the winning trophy. We game them a good run and lost by 2.

Chicago prime Team

One good thing came out of this weekend though, they beat all the Triple A teams and they gave us a bid (invite) to play in the world championship in Orlando. Six of the guys on the team had not ever been down there and were very jealous of the guys with rings from last year.

MORE WAITING

Bryan and Mary were traveling with us back to IL so I had this great idea to go and get gas between games so when it was time to hit the road for home we could get on the road. Turns out I was a genius. As we were heading into Louisville Mike's cell started ringing. It was his teammates all checking in. There was a bad accident that shut down 65 and they were all stuck behind the crash. They sat for almost 2 hours waiting for the clear. We were the only ones that got through. Thank You god!