First I’d like to talk about next week before I get into the update, while I’ve got everyone’s attention…
The most likely scenario is that we’ll play our last games of the regular season at Waveland Fields on Thursday, Friday will be a day of rest… and then the Tournament will go down on Saturday at Upper Hutchinson. The only things that could change that would be rain on the 10th… or a failure of the Grant Park contractors to remove the fencing on Upper and release the park for use as they’ve promised on the 9th… if the latter were to occur, the Tournament would simply move up north to Lawrence Fields, everything else would stay the same.
For me, next Thursday through Saturday becomes all Design League, all the time. Scores from Thursday have to be gotten that same day on the diamonds so that the website can be updated and the Tournament Big Board prepared to be printed on Friday so that it’s ready for Saturday. I’ll be working on this stuff pretty much non-stop so here’s what I need from all of you;
First, Scores need to be given to me on the diamonds next Thursday, late game Captains will need to return the bases to me on Diamond 2 just as it happened last night. For the record, Cannon @ Gettys Group next Thursday has been switched to Diamond 1 to allow me to stay on Diamond 2 as I don’t want to change the routine we’ve established for the staking of the bases.
Second, understanding what a pain in the ass playing at Waveland Fields has been and the aggravation it has caused many of us, especially now with the 5:30 early start time… I would ask all the Captains to do their very best towards not forfeiting our last games of the regular season… this is just for one last Thursday. Even on my own team I have 3/4’s of my players agreeing to leave work a little early that day so that we can field a team and get 2011 in the books… just one last day of sacrifice.
And last, with all that has happened this year and all that I’m continuing to deal with on a daily basis… the last thing I want to happen is for any of our teams to bail on the Tournament last minute… my understanding right now is that all teams are good for the Tournament except for Old Stylin’ who are having issues due to one of their players getting married on that day. Their Captains continue to work on putting together a skeleton crew, that’s being worked on… but my assumption is that I don’t have to worry about any of the rest of you. Please communicate with your players early and often on this so potential issues can be dealt with over the course of the next week.
So that’s it… paying attention to those 3 things would help me out tremendously and if all goes well, 2011 will be in the books with a new champion crowned within the next 8 days.
On the fields yesterday we continued to pay the price of having been displaced from Grant Park… 7 of the 8 games got played, and I thank all of you for the effort in getting out there… but I know that many of us have seen our lineups decimated due to the strange circumstances… this has statistically skewed things a bit and it’s one of the issues on my list for the Park District.
That said, not a whole lot happened in terms of change yesterday… JC Anderson and Clune swapping the 9 and 10 seed marked the only movement on the Leaderboard. Other than that, there were no real upsets… a disappointment to me was that the game between #2 Cannon and #4 Goettsch was obviously affected by depleted rosters and trouble getting to the park on time for the 5:30 start… Bears traffic on Lakeshore Drive also played a role in our problems…
But on to better times right… next week is THE week… and I don’t know about any of you… but no matter how much I enjoy Design League softball and usually wish we could play all Winter…. this year, I’m gonna be happy to see things draw to a close… hopefully we’ll get a bright, sunny day for our Tournament and have a redemptive day on what’s now the newly re-constructed Upper Hutchinson Fields. Keep your fingers crossed.