(Catching up…here’s a report on Jack’s summer baseball team; look for posts about FBU Top Gun football camp, more about Tanzania (!), and general summer photos in the next few days.)

Jack played on a combined Upper Makefield-Solebury team this summer. It was great for him because he got to play with his friends from the Spiders as well as his friends from the Mavs team he played on during the Spring. The main focus of the team was the PONY regional tournament, held outside Pittsburgh 15-18 July, where they rallied to finish as runner-up.

The team also did a warm-up tournament in June at the Ripken Complex in Aberdeen, MD. The team struggled a bit in Aberdeen, but had lots of fun and started to get used to playing together.

Bucks Co. Mavs @ Ripken Complex, Aberdeen MD

CLICK HERE for photos from the first game in Aberdeen.

CLICK HERE for photos from the second game in Aberdeen. (I missed the last game they played because I was at Owen’s fencing tournament.)

The team had several practices between the Aberdeen tournament and the Pittsburgh PONY league tournament and really started playing well in the PONY games.

They won their first two games, lost the third and then battled back to play in the championship game. In the five games, Jack went 7-11 at the plate (0.636) with a 0.750 on-base percentage and (my favorite stat) NO STRIKEOUTS.

Offensively, he made a couple of excellent bunts (shades of last year!), had a couple a nice singles to the outfield and got robbed once by a questionable infield fly call. He seems especially to like to swing at the first pitch and to hit with an 0-2 count.

(L) Getting in, just under the tag & (R) A big hit with with 0-2

Defensively at third, he had one or two errors, made a couple of strong plays and made nice double play that the ump inexplicably called the runner safe (see the game #5 photos: the 1st baseman’s foot was so clearly on the bag, before the runner even gets into the frame. And, no, that’s not creative photo cropping.)

CLICK HERE for Mavs v McCandless (Game #1)

CLICK HERE for Mavs v  Cranberry (Game #2)

CLICK HERE for Mavs v Brad-Mar-Pine (Game #3)

CLICK HERE for Mavs v Washington (Game #4)

CLICK HERE for Mavs v Brad-Mar-Pine (Game #5, championship game)

Beside the excellent baseball, I think the boys (and families) really had an awesome time together. We all stayed in the same hotel, so the kids did a lot of swimming. We went to the movies and even got to catch the last half of a Pittsburgh Pirates game, complete with Clemente jerseys (THANKS again, Hitchcocks!). All in all, I think it was an experience the boys will remember a long time.

(L) Mavs on the big screen & (R) At the Pirates game (thanks Karen for the photo)

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Oops!

I didn’t hear about my favorite moment from the weekend until last night. Kevin and I were talking about Jack’s game (I missed the beginning because I was at the fencing tournament with Owen.)

Kevin mentioned that — uncharacteristically — Jack had TWO errors in one inning when he was playing at third. No big deal. He’s an 11-year-old boy who never set foot on third base until this Spring.

What I loved is the second part of the story.

Kevin said that when the inning was over and the team was in the dugout getting ready to bat, Jack went up to the pitcher and apologized to him for making the two errors and making it tough for the pitcher to get out of the inning without giving up a lot of runs.

I think that’s the proudest I’ve been of Jack all season.

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Fiona had a great time Saturday at her classmate’s birthday party at the Doylestown Rock Gym. As usual, she was fearless and shot right up the wall.

She seemed to really like working her way up the wall using the “rocks,” as she especially liked the ride back down to the ground. They also climbed rope ladders and rope nets.

The gym offers a day camp and Fiona said she’d like to try it, so maybe we’ll add that to her summer schedule.

(Oh yeah, we’ll just squeeze it in along with gymnastics camp, baseball camp, a solo visit to Aunt Jo & Uncle Keban’s, a few weeks at CEC, a visit to Quebec City.)

CLICK HERE for more photos of Fiona rock climbing.

Owen (on left) charges to score a point.

Owen had another fencing tournament this weekend. A couple of months ago, he fenced generally the same group of kids and finished third. He improved to finish second in this tournament, knocking off the #1 seed in the semi-finals.

CLICK HERE for more photos of Owen’s fencing tournament.

In between birthday parties and fencing, there were baseball games. And then there were more baseball games. And, I think after that, we went to MORE baseball games.

Fiona is a stand-out slugger in t-ball, although she sometimes spaces out when she’s supposed to be catching the ball at first and insists on throwing it back to the catcher softball-style; Owen is a legendary hitter in minors and has developed into an outstanding catcher (one of his best attributes as a catcher is his ability to manage the pitchers and get them to throw strikes) and Jack did it all this weekend in rec and travel: catcher, pitcher, third base and I lost count of the number of hits.

CLICK HERE for a collection of the weekend’s baseball photos.

Fiona is down and ready to field the next hit

I love how Owen digs in at the plate; no one is brushing him back

Great play! Jack gets the runner out at third

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Surprise, surprise. I got behind on posting photos. (Who’s waiting for the rest of the Africa photos??? I’ve only posted two days out of 12 of those!).

Sorry I got so behind — but grab a BIG cup of coffee and you can re-live all the Mavericks games of the season so far. Disclaimer: Some of these are great shots, some of them suffer from too little light, or a fence in the way, or just random operator error, but I kept them in anyway because I like them!!

Photos are here from all the games (after Warminster, the first game).
(Warminster photos are here.)

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Owen’s playing rec baseball for Solebury this year, in the 10-11 division. His team is the Dodgers and is coached by Kevin. It’s a great group of boys and they’re learning a lot of baseball.

Owen has been awesome at catcher and has logged some innings pitching (a first for him.) And, of course, we’ve always known he is a slugger. I wouldn’t be surprised if he puts one out of the park this summer.

More photos are here.

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Because Jack’s playing with the Upper Makefield Mavericks, he’s also playing in their rec program. He’s having a great time and his team is really good. Right now, I think they’re tied for third, but have flirted with first place in the league for a game or two.

I’m way behind on photos, but here’s a group of pictures from the games they’ve played so far. (Jack wears #1.)

Mets photos are here.

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Although it wasn’t a great game for the team (the Mavericks lost), Jack got to pitch in his first travel game ever!!

It was freezing cold (49 degrees in the second inning), but he did a fantastic of pitching.

Jack came in midway through the third inning and threw about 15 pitches. He had one strikeout and gave up two hits, but didn’t give up a run and got them out of the inning. He’s really wanted to pitch for a while, but only got a chance to pitch in rec ball last year.

I’m sure he’ll pitch in rec this year too and that will help him gain confidence so he can pitch some more in travel.

Kevin was oozing so much nervousness when Jack was pitching that I was worried Jack would pick up on it from the mound, but Jack just swaggered out there and started throwing like he’s been doing it all his life. I can’t wait to see him pitch next time.

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Jack Beats the Throw, Slides into Homeplate

The Spring/Summer baseball marathon is underway. Jack’s travel team, the Mavericks, won their first game yesterday. Of course, they had to make it “interesting” (!) — they were out to a huge lead, let the other team back in the game late, but then regained control and won the game.

More photos from yesterday’s game are here.

Owen and Fiona’s games begin on Saturday. Stay tuned …

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Let’s see…there are 28 travel team players available to assign to seven intramural baseball teams. Now, I’m a long way from my days as a math whiz, but it would seem to me that putting four travel players on each team would be a fair way to allocate the talent.

No? It didn’t work that way? You mean one team has only one travel player and the other teams are stacked with travel players? You mean a group of adults sat in a room and decided that unbalanced teams would be fair to children?

What a surprise!! I guess some people really get an ego boost about winning intramural baseball.

Isn’t the slogan of Solebury baseball “…where kids count more than runs”?

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The Intelligencer ran a season wrap-up for Jack’s team in Home Fields this week.  The online link is here.

The team is trying to put together a group to play fall ball. Jack says he wants to play, as long as he doesn’t miss any football.

(I’m hoping playing fall baseball will help him feel a little better about being abruptly cut by the Solebury Storm U12 Soccer team coach after three years on the team so that four players from other townships could play on the team.)

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