2009 Baseball Champs!

The Red Sox beat the Phillies last night 5-2 in a great game. Ben played very well and hit in the two go-ahead runs after being tied 2-2 for many innings. Ben has been playing Little League for 8 years/16 seasons and this is his first championship. Way to go Ben!

Ben's baseball update

Ben's baseball team beat the Phillies last night 7-3 advancing them to the championship game Thursday night. It is a double elimination series so...If the win, they are the champions...if they loose they get to play again Saturday for the championship. Go RedSox!

The Buccaneers first season comes to an end.

Ben's first season of High School baseball ended yesterday with a win in Everglades City.

Boy was that a long strange drive. The school is about 90 miles south of us, but they literally are in the middle of the Florida Everglades.

All I could think was, "People live here?". You drove for a long time seeing nothing but smelly swamp and then...surprise! There is a small town where the main economy is Swamp boat tours. Rob thought it was great and I had to keep him from stopping at the swamp boat/ice cream/realtor hut so he couldnt find info on property there.

Ben's team ended up 4 wins-7 losses for their first season...which is very good for a new team.

Ben will continue to play with his Jr league Red Sox team. They are in a county tournament this week and they play game 2 tonight. They won game 1 14-4 and Ben pitched the first 3 innings and did a great job. Baby Aiden got to come see his first baseball game at 6 weeks old. He stayed awake through about half of it.

Here is a few pictures of Ben and his team. Congrats Ben!

Update on Ben

Ben and his buddy Joey at the hospital. Joey rushed over as soon as the game was done.

We had a Doctor visit yesterday with Ben's regular doctor and he suggested that we see an ear nose throat specialist on Tuesday(the swelling should be down by then) and they will look inside his nose to see if there is any damage to the septum. I'm not really sure what that is but I think it is important.

Ben is in a lot of pain and has a constant headache. He had a pretty bad concussion and the headache was to be expected. The vomiting stopped after about 8 hours but he is still having bleeding off and on.

Ben's good friend Joey spent the day with him yesterday and slept over last night, which was nice because I could relax a bit and get some sleep finally knowing that there was someone with him if he had trouble.

There was a big baseball tournament nearby this morning so I took Ben and Joey to go watch for a while and Ben lasted only about a half hour before he began to get dizzy and feel ill. This has me worried a bit but the doctor said he may need to lay down for a week or so with such trauma to the head.

I will update again on Tuesday after the Dr. visit or if anything changes.

Yes...another ER visit

Ben getting a CAT scan

Ben waiting for the xray guy to come get him

Waiting to be seen in the Emergency room.

I know it has been a while since I have blogged about an ER visit, so here goes.

Ben had a HS game today and he was the catcher. He was making a great play in the 2nd inning, tagging out the runner coming home when the runner picked his knee up and slammed Ben in the face breaking his nose. Ben was down for quite a while on the field. The blood seemed endless. Once he got his bearings back, he asked to stay in the game. He played the next 4 innings and then began to vomit over and over. I took him to the closest hospital near the field and they did a CAT scan and took xrays of his face.

Nose was broken(thankfully it is still straight...so far) and his brain had no swelling or bleeding...thank God!

The boy who knee'd him was immediately thown out of the game and I heard that the coach went over and took his jersey off his back...I like that coach.

The opposing coach said Ben could play for his team anytime.

We were very impressed at Ben's strength and courage...getting hit in the nose is not pleasant but he did not want to let his team down.

We are very proud of him.

This is Ben at first after the incident. Click on the picture and you can see the gauze roll stuck up his nose...eewww. It didn't stay long because the volume of blood was too strong.
Just such a typical Ben moment. nothing interferes with baseball.

Smiles, Lynne

Much Better

Ben's 2nd high school game went much better than the first. Ben got on base all 4 at bats. He hit well and played a great short stop position.

The Buccaneers lost 8-9 when Ben came across home plate in the 7th for the tying run and had a bad call made against him for the final out of the game. Ben was upset by the call but knows that bad calls happen.

We are very proud of him. Jr/Sr Little League has their opening day Thursday so we will be a very busy baseball family once again.

Smiles, Lynne

1-17

No kidding...although I think the kids did really well. They were just soooooo nervous.
Ben pitched the first 3 innings and just didn't have enough from the start. He just put too much pressure on himself.

The defense was not doing their part as much as they could have, so it just wasn't the Buccaneers day.

We were very pleased with Ben's enthusiasm and the way he never let the score bother him. He knew he was there to learn and get his feet wet in a whole new "pool".

Ben's Big Day

Today is the first game for the Oasis High School Baseball team...ever!

Ben (an 8th grader) will be the starting pitcher.

This was an exciting morning because the team must wear a shirt and tie on game day and it has been a while...since kindergarten actually, that Ben has worn a tie.

He looks very handsome and so grown up!

I will get some game photos and a picture of him on the mound this afternoon.
Game time is 4pm vs. South Fort Myers.

Have a great day!
Smiles, Lynne

Baseball is Back

For the past few weeks Ben has been on a Jr. League Baseball team. The baseball season started during the peak of rainy season in Florida, so there were many rained out practices.

Last week the games started and boy was that a different world. I would have never guessed that 13 year old kids would not know how to catch a ball or swing a bat. I would have assumed that if you are 13 and never played baseball, you would not be picking it up now. I was wrong.

Many of these kids are brand new to the sport. Coming from AAU where the players are the best of the best, we had some adjustments to make on our expectations.

I think Ben is having a good time and taking it for what it is...fun. The coaches are dads who really don't know the rules very well. Ben has had to correct them on their coaching a time or two.

Getting Ben from school to home, finish homework, eat dinner and get to the field in 2 hours is a sport in itself. They should give a trophy to any parent who can get that done.

Lauren is having fun, she of course has made friends and loves to run and play at the ball field after school.

We have already had a round of the flu come and go. I'm not sure it was even the flu because it was quite quick and minor for the most part (4 days), Ben got it worse than the rest of us. It is gone now and we are glad.

I just received my ballot to vote by mail and am very excited to NOT have to stand in line to vote this time around. I am not sure why everyone doesn't vote this way.

I guess that is it for now. Smiles, Lynne

Oh yeah,
AMY, please send me an email...I lost your new email address.

We're back!

Our trip is over and we are very tired. Ben's baseball team came in 2nd. They did a really great job. Ben got a nice medal and the team got a beautiful trophy.

Lauren had a real fun time. There were lots of kids to play with. She was playing from morning till night.

Our schedule this weekend was a wierd one. Ben's first game in Winterhaven was Friday at 7pm.
The next game was Saturday at 8pm. We had a bunch of free time on Saturday and very little cash to spend. Our hotel was in Davenport which is about 15 minutes from Disneyworld, so after spending the morning at the pool with the team, Ben, Lauren and I headed to Downtown Disney. That is where all the shops are and the riverboat cruise departs. We had a blast! I think we spent$13.00 total and just had a great time. Most of that $ was from the kids riding the teacup ride there. It spins crazy fast and Lauren loves for Ben to spin her guts out!

On Sunday The team didn't have to play until 4pm, so we had another day to hang out, unfortunately we had to check out of our hotel by 11am so we were homeless for the afternoon. We decided to head back to Disney and eat lunch. We ate at Wolfgang Puck's restraunt and it was wonderful. After lunch we went to see the parrots at the Rainforest cafe there in Disney(Lauren loves the big birds).

We then headed back to the baseball field about 45 minutes away and the team won the first two games to get to the finals at 8pm and by then they were exhausted and didn't play to their full potential. They had a very long weekend and we were 2 1/2 hours from home. We got home at midnight(80mph). I don't know how their parents got them up this morning for school. Homeschooling does have benefits.

Lauren's face is healing, the swelling is gone. While at the baseball field she fell and took all the skin off her knee. Luckily I always carry band-aids and ointment with me. She looks like a battered child. Thankfully everyone there knows my kids well enough to expect scabs!

Hope everyone had a nice weekend.
Smiles, Lynne

Ben's arm update

We just got back from the Dr.'s office and it looks as though Ben's arm has not healed very much.

The x-ray does show change, just not very much. Dr. Cardone had Ben bend his arm at the elbow, hand to the sky and the Dr. pulled Ben's forearm back and it still hurt quite a bit.

So, for now he is on another 4 weeks of no throwing. We will go back for another set of x rays on the 25th of March to see if any progress is being made.

The good news is that because Ben has been doing so well with NOT throwing, he does not need a cast for the 4 weeks. Yippee.

Rob could not make it to the appt. because of work so Dr. Cardone was so nice to have a second set of xrays made for us to bring home. What a nice guy! With all Ben's injuries, they should be nice to me, I'm sure I have at least paid a couple of his mortgage payments! I really like them at that office.

There you have it! Smiles, Lynne

Another eventful Baseball Game

Many people say that baseball is a boring game. For some reason I have never felt thay way.
I feel that there is always something that happens in every game that makes it memorable. Whether it's a great diving catch or a grand slam at just the right moment, there is always the moment you will talk about after it's over.
Sunday was no exception.

Ben's team was scheduled to play a double header with a team that we have played often. They never beat us, but have given us a run for our money in the past.

The kids are required to arrive 1 hour before game time to warm up and get ready. Game time was at 10am and by 9:30 we already had 2 men down with bad injuries. One player was in the batting cages and took a ball to the face. It was totally an accident. He was in the second set of cages and a player in the first set of cages hit a ball and it came through a small opening in the netting and hit him square in the face.

The second player was just finishing up warming up his arm on the field when he turned to head to the dugout, he was hit in the back of the head by an overthrown ball. He was down for quite a while on that one. He was seeing double in 1 eye and felt like throwing up.

So a team of 11 was now down to 9 players. Well, you say, that's all you need to play a game, right? You are forgetting that Ben cannot play still. We are at 8 players and looking at a forfeit of 2 games.

The coaches come to Rob and I. It's totally our decision a to whether these 2 teams can play or not. They want to put Ben at 1st base and have him NOT throw the ball. Their plan is to have the 2nd baseman assist Ben if necessary. I want to know how you can get through a baseball game with the 1st baseman never needing to throw a ball. We tell them that we will try and see how it goes. Ben is told to NOT throw...No matter what.

To everyones relief, the game begins.

Ben's first at bat, BAM...home run! As always with his homeruns, I like to collect the ball and save them for him. One of the dads from the team offers to go get the ball. Keep in mind that behind the baseball field is a lot of long grass and a swamp. I offer to go as well because I saw where it landed. We are looking for the ball in the long grass and as always I am very aware that an alligator could be residing there. I am listening and being very careful.

Still not finding the ball, I decide to turn and look in another spot and there it was! Nope not the ball, a big long DEADLY water moccasin! These snakes are not afraid and will defend their territory to the death. He was hissing and really aggitated.

I am frozen. There is a big snake between me and the exit of where I am standing. If I go backwards, I am in an alligator swamp, forwards will perhaps bring me to my death by snake bite. Since I am writing this, you know it turned out ok, but I am sure I lost at least 1 year off my life for that scare. When I got back to the field, the players said they heard me scream. I don't actually remember screaming but I would be surprised if I hadn't.

As you can guess, Ben will not have that homerun ball on his shelf.

Back to the game: It became a homerun derby that day. There were 9 homeruns hit all day by our team. Three were hit by Ben, 2 by Andrew, 2 by Jeff, 1 by Zack and the first one ever by Cal (I love the FIRST homerun..it's always special). Only 2 balls were recovered, thankfully one was Cal's.

The other team began complaining that our kids were hitting so many homeruns. They were saying that our fences were too close. NOTE: They are regulation 200 feet deep and 8 feet high. What's funny is that they would say that when their kids are playing on the same field. It was very unusual for our kids to hit so many in one day, but it was fun!

Ok, so if you think that's enough excitement for 1 day...your wrong. We are winning the second game 7-2 when the other team gets 5 runs in 1 inning and ties the game. The other team is getting pumped up and really wants to beat our team. Win or loose, I love close games. Our team has a couple more homeruns and we go up 15-7. Our coach calls a "bok" on their pitcher (that's when the pitcher makes an illegal move when pitching). The umpire calls BOK and the other team freaks out! They call all the kids off the field and start yelling that the umpires are cheaters. The other teams coach comes out on the field and spits a mouthfull of sunflower seeds into the face of the umpire!

Their parents are screaming foul language at the umpires and yelling at our team for some reason I still don't know. It was another terrible example of how parents and coaches get too involved in the game. All they needed to do was to call time out and have a grown up discussion with the umpires. Instead, the kids from the other team who were doing really well, were pulled from the field and had to hear their parents and their nasty mouths acting like a two year old having a tantrum.

When you play as much baseball as Ben's team does, you are bound to have games like that, but I am always shocked and saddened when it happens.

I told you that baseball is not boring. By the way...our two kids were fine. Xrays were negative and all is well with the Infinity Team!

Oh, yeah, Ben played 1st base both games and never threw the ball. He did great and whenever Ben got the ball, he would make the play at first and then the second baseman (Garrett) would come over and Ben would hand him the ball and Garrett would throw it to the pitcher. The other team never could figure out what was going on. They thought there was a sneaky play going on, but couldn't catch them at it. FUNNY!

Have a good week and stay out of the grassy swamps! Smiles, Lynne

Getting caught up...

Every year I make the same resolution:

"I will NOT go to the Dr's office or emergency room this year"

Do you know why I make this same resolution each year? Because I can never even get to March without breaking it!

Well, It's February and yes, we have already been to the dr.'s and had xrays.

Who?....you ask. Ben

Ben has been having problems with his elbow for the past 6 or 8 months. After his games he would tell us that his elbow was killing him. We just thought that he was throwing too much and needed to rest and ice it. Being the catcher, he does throw a lot during a game.

Well, he had a six week baseball break over the Christmas holiday and right when he started back up with baseball, it again was hurting him. Rob and I decided to take him in to have an xray to be sure he didn't have an existing problem in the elbow.

The xray showed that he had torn his growth plate on the inside of his right elbow.
It is called Little League Elbow and requires a long rest period to heal and if that doesn't work, he may need surgery to fix the elbow and then a long recouperation period.

So, as of now he is just batting for his baseball team. No throwing for 4 weeks. We will then have another set of xrays done to see if he is healing on his own. If he is, then we will just rest him more and then he will have to ease back into throwing after about 6 weeks. let's hope the rest will fix the problem. It would be a shame for him to be in a cast for months and months.

So now you know why I have to have the same resolution every year.
Perhaps 2009 will be the one?

Smiles, Lynne

Well...Ben had a good game...but..

They lost in game one of the playoffs 7-2. Ben did really well but the other team just played better. Rob said the kids were great for him and I am thankful. They had fun. And I realized that although I love having a clean kitchen sink and no dirty clothes lying around, I really love having my family home with me.

Don't forget to THAW your turkeys! Like I did!

Smiles, Lynne

Ben's baseball update

Just talked to Ben and his team won all three of his games in the first round. He hit a triple and a double as well as some singles. Rob said he has been hitting really well. Ben caught the first two games and then played left field and 3rd base for the last game. Tomorrow it's single elimination, you loose you go home. He plays at 10am and if they win he goes to the semi-finals at noon and then on to the finals at 2pm. I will let you know how things go.

Smiles, Lynne

Ben's collision

Ben's team had a double header in Englewood Florida this past weekend and they won both games. As you can see here, Ben stole home and had a collision with the very large catcher from the other team. He was fine, got up smiling and even picked up the catchers helmet and handed it back to him. He did get called out though. It was a great try.

There is a tournament in Bradenton this next weekend. Thankfully it's only about 1 hour away so we can drive instead of doing the hotel thing.

I did recover from last Monday's painful workout and got back to it on Wednesday with my upper body. Legs are good again. I am feeling better each day I do it. I will continue but I will not enjoy it.

Smiles, Lynne

The raffle winner was picked yesterday...

And no one from Ben's tickets won. Thanks anyways for supporting the Infinity Baseball Team!
They collected over $1000.00. That will pay for 2 tournaments! Thanks again.
Smiles, Lynne

Ben's Double Header Sunday

Yesterday, Ben had 2 games right here in Cape Coral(which was very nice for a change...no travel). His team did really well. They won both games 12-2. In the second game Ben hit a 3 run homerun! We had a fun time and Lauren had a blast working in the concession stand with the other team! Boy was it HOT. Luckily both teams had those shade tents and those helped a ton.

Today is my first day of no baby. I got up and did my exercises at 7am. I was sure I would throw up during them but I did get through it. I'm not so sure I still won't throw up though. Boy am I out of shape. Not for long though.
Smiles, Lynne

Ben's Infinity Team

We have returned from ben's first Fall tournament in Tampa.

Overall it was a fun weekend. The boys played at 9pm on Friday night.

They won in 3 innings 11-0. There are rules to stop the game if one team gets too far ahead.

This was great for our kids so they could go back to the hotel and rest for their Saturday game at 2pm. Sometimes they have an 8am game after a 9pm game the night before, so 2pm was great for the kids.

They lost the 2nd game 2-3 but they tried very hard and played well. We had a bunch of lightening delays and that doesn't help either team stay focused. That team was a baseball clinic team(their coach is paid not a volunteer). They were really good and very BIG.

On Sunday the team got a "bye" for the first game because they had given up so few runs, so their game was scheduled for 2pm. The kids got to the field at 1pm and began to warm up when the skies opened up and it poured for 40 minutes! It's very hard to get 12yr old boys to stay out of the rain! They love to get wet. Once the rain stopped we had to wait for the previous game to finish up and we didn't get started until well after 3pm. The boys were beat by then and played poorly. They lost 7-1. This was the first game that Ben did not give his best effort for the team and Rob and I were very disappointed with him during that game. He hit a pop fly to right field and he didn't even run to 1st. When I asked him why he commented, "that's the best right fielder in all of AAU, I knew he would catch it!" Ben has been told that he better loose that attitude or he will loose travel ball. His coach was upset with him and he will have to smarten up and work hard to keep his starting spot now.

Rob and I have never given Ben a hard time for errors or lack of hits but we will not let a bad attitude continue. He is now on a short rope. We will see how bad he wants it.

Smiles, Lynne

Not exactly what I expected to see at a game

As I said before,. Ben had an AAU baseball game today. The game was a double header against a team(Bandits) that is coached by MLB players who didn't make it too far. I'm sorry I didn't get their names. Anyway, game 1 was at 10 am and things were tense from the beginning. The coach for the Bandits was very serious and seemed to have a chip on his shoulder from the start.
Ben was catching and he was doing well at bat. Our team was beating the Bandits by a lot of runs(17-2) and the other team decided to play dirty.

When we got up in the top of the third inning, the pitcher started pitching very close to our batters and even hit more than one. When our batters were "on deck" they would stand next to the Bandits dugout entrance and swing the bat to warm up. Ben was on deck and the coach from the other team asked Ben how it was going to feel to get hit in the back. Ben kept warming up and then at his turn at the plate the pitcher hit him intentionally. Ben went straight to the dugout and told our coach what was said before to him by the other team and the coach told Ben to get to first base and he would take care of it. Another player on the team said "they said that to me too". The coach went face to face with the Bandits coach and the fun began. After some words and a bit of yelling about us running up the score, the game was called and we were all sent home. Our coach refused to play our children against a dirty team.

Well, Ben is passionate about baseball and he was fired up! He behaved very well in that situation and I am proud of him. I am sad that the Bandits kids are being taught to play that way.

What a sad event to witness, but I guess as the kids get older, we will see more and more of it.
Ben was angry at the players and I tried to explain to him why it was the coaches fault and he said "yeah, but the kids didn't have to listen". I am glad that he is mature enough to know right from wrong even if it is a grown up making the wrong decisions.

The simple days are gone, I am sad.
Lynne