April 4-5

Rain was in the forecast for Monday, in the morning I had a phone call from Don. We'll start the spring street hockey season on Monday the 11th, we have eleven teams in two divisions. We had eleven in the fall league as well but for the spring season the split is 3/8 instead of 4/7, the crossover portion of the schedule stays in place with every team meeting each opponent from the opposite division once. I was able to work the format out quickly since it's essentially the same as the fall league. It starting raining in the early afternoon but the game at McCaskey was still on as scheduled, when I arrived at the ballfield it was coming down steadily. The plan was to start around 4:30 (fifteen minutes later than scheduled) but the rain never let up and the game was postponed to Tuesday. The rainout afforded me the opportunity to put the finishing touches on the hockey schedule, on Tuesday morning I took copies to Don's wife at her workplace which is only a few blocks away from where I live. Jenny was in town on business, we got together for a few minutes for drinks over her lunch break. In the afternoon we reconvened at JPM for the rescheduled ballgame, this was the league opener against Manheim Township. The LL baseball league uses the same schedule format as basketball, two games each against your five division-mates and one each against the teams from Section II (basketball is eliminating the crossovers in '16-17 but that's another story). On this day the sun was out and the skies were clear but it was COLD with temperatures in the mid-40s and winds out of the west at 20 miles per hour. The Red Tornado dropped to 0-3 with a 4-0 loss, the club had its opportunities but could not get the big hit at the right time. Devin Ashba pitched five innings and suffered the loss, David Peguero finished it in relief. The boys play a road game on Wednesday, they are home against Cedar Crest on Friday the 8th. Take care, thanks for reading.