July 24-26

Monday lunch at the mall started the new week (as it almost always does), after supper I went up to the rink and did some prelim work in readiness for the start of the summer league. On Tuesday we played the first two of eighteen scheduled games. On this night Orange met Gold and Green played Blue, those pairings occur again on August 3rd and 15th. We had a 61% player turnout for the first night which isn't bad considering that some who signed up either had to work or are on vacation. The format is very different from our spring and fall seasons for the simple reason that the results don't matter, the summer season is for those who can't get enough of the game and just want to play for the fun of it. Had my usual lunchtime visit with Jenny on Wednesday, she's still having some soreness but it's not as uncomfortable as it had been which is a great sign. In the evening I was at the ballpark for a night of youth baseball. Every year the local newspaper sponsors a tournament that crowns champions in three age groups. The Midget Division bracket (ages 15 and 16) has been played on North Prince Street since 2007, eight teams (all from the Lanco Midget League) qualify. The first two quarterfinal games were played on Tuesday, on this night the other half of the bracket played its first-rounders. The second game of the evening was noteworthy, for the first time since 2014 the Lancaster Jr. Tornado advanced to the final eight. Five members of the team (Dylan Esh, Alex Dominguez, Mason Lee, Nate Santiago and Evan Proulx) played on the varsity at McCaskey in the spring, most of the others were on the JV squad (which I never get to see because their games are on another field at the same time the varsity plays). The boys won 8-0 which puts them into the semifinals on Thursday, the championship is scheduled for Friday (weather-permitting, the forecast for Friday and Saturday doesn't sound good at all). Take care, thanks for reading.