Cooperstown or Bust!!

July started off with a bang.. We all gathered our gear and set off for New York.
Our first day there, we got on the subway and headed down to the Statue of Liberty. From there we visited ground zero, saw the Empire State Building, ate at the Hard Rock Cafe in Time Square, and then headed up to Yankee Stadium for the Yankees-Red Sox game.


The next day it was off to Cooperstown. Many hours, a long detour at Wal-Mart, and not so great GPS directions later we arrived Friday night. Now the coaches and boys were on their own in the barracks of Dreams Park.
Saturday, the official fun began. All the skills competitions and opening ceremony were held.



On Sunday it was down to the business of baseball. We beat the Carolina Riptide 8-6, but lost to the Arkansas Reds 18-1. Monday we started the day by going to the Hall of Fame museum followed by beating the Cambridge Cubs 13-1, and the Grassland Grizzlies 9-4. Tuesday we beat the Boys of Baseball 11-3, and the New Richmond Stingers 9-6. That night we had a fun dinner outing at the Ladies house. Wednesday we beat the Roselle Renegades 12-2. Now it was time for the tournament brackets to be played. We ranked #22 out of 98 teams going in. We first faced the #43 seed Norwin Knights. They gave us all we could handle, but we came away with the win 5-4. Next up was the #11 seed, Express Baseball. It was a tight game the whole way, a defensive duel. Somehow we just did all the little things right and advanced to the sweet 16 with a 4-3 win. It was the teams goal to play on Championship day, and now it was going to happen. Thursday morning we had to play the #6 seed, Bulldogs Baseball. We kept it close, and were even tied 4-4 in the 4th, but they had just a little more fire power than we did and beat us 10-5. Our team had a record of 8-2 and tied for 9th place for the whole tournament.
All the boys and the coaches had a great time playing cards at night, trading pins with the other teams, pillow baseball and who could forget the "white tornadoes" every day.