So after a 45 game regular season it was now time for the playoffs. Since we finished 4th in the regular season we had to travel to Adelaide for the first round of the playoffs. It was a best of 5 series, winner goes on, and the loser goes home.
Due to it being Australia Day on Thursday, we had to fly the team out on two separate days. I left with about 14 other players on Wednesday. Once again, caught the train into the airport with Joey Hage and Tyler Collins.
When we arrived in adelaide we had so much time to kill, so I decided that time was best killed in my room. I made the terrible mistake of taking a nap at 7:00pm, and I didn't wake up until 9:00pm so i was up all night. Luckily my room mate made the same mistake so we found ways to entertain ourselves like watching movies on the iPad and playing Monopoly on the iPad. We finally fell asleep around 4:00am and that means, we had an epic sleep in. I woke up about midday while Jacob woke up around 1:30pm. We were just relaxing in our room until Aaron Sookee called Jacob at 1:50pm telling us the bus to go to the field leaves in 10 minutes. So Jacob and me both jumped up and got ready, and we were downstairs in the bus with 5 minutes to spare.
Game 1
Like we always do, we gave Craig Anderson the ball and he delivered a workmans like outing going 6 2/3 innings giving up 3 runs, all of which were unearned on 5 hits. The rest of the pitching staff did an equally good job as they came in to throw 2 1/3 shutout innings. David Kandilas was the offensive star of the night. He went 1 for 4, drove in 3 runs and scored a run himself.
After the game I just went back to my room to relax and hopefully get to sleep early but once again, that plan was an epic fail. I was up to about 2:00am again. I finally fell asleep, but was woken up at 4:00am by a crazy drunk guy banging on my room door. For some strange reason I thought Jacob was outside so I was just going to get up and open the door, but the banging got more aggressive so Jacob got up and called the front desk, while I tried to talk to the drunk guy through the door trying to convince him that this wasn't his room. He thought we were telling him lies, he also thought our name was Jeremy. He came back a few times but eventually left us alone around 4:40am. It's funny what alcohol can do to people isn't it.
When I finally woke up I didn't have much time to do anything so I just had lunch and packed my stuff to get in the van to go to the field.
Game 2
We went down 8-3. We scored all our runs in the 3rd inning as Paul Mildren went the distance to record a complete game for Adelaide. I pitched from the 6th to 8th inning. I had success in my first two innings facing the minimum amount of hitters, but ran into trouble in the 8th after a few defensive miscues led to 3 runs being scored. My velocity was around 89-92mph consistently over the 3 innings so that's one positive. Funny thing happened when I came out for my 2nd inning. The umpire behind the plate actually apologized to me for making a bad call in what would have been the 3rd strike to the Adelaide hitter. I struck him out on the very next pitch, so the bad call didn't really affect the outcome of the at at, but it was nice to know that umpires themselves, do admit to making mistakes.
I woke up quite late again, so all I did was eat lunch and get in the bus to go to the field.
Game 3
After one of our biggest offensive outbursts of the year where we scored 8 runs through the first 3 innings the rain started to come down, and it came down in a hurry. We waited for the rain to stop before we resumed play, but as soon as the rain stopped, there was a power outage and the lights at the field didn't turn back on. We waited around until about 10:00pm before we left the field, but we managed to keep ourselves entertained in the dark. Adelaide had small toy baseballs that lit up and changed colors so we thought it would be the perfect time to try and play cricket in the dark. It turned out to be a great success as both teams joined in on the fun. The bad thing about this rainout and power outage is that we would have to restart the game tomorrow with the scores tied at 0-0.
Day 4 in Adelaide was set to be a long one. A double header was on the cards and it was going to be a very humid day.
Long story short, we won both games and ended Adelaide's season just like they did to us last season. We won the back of great starting pitching as Aiden Francis took the win in game 1 throwing 8 innings giving up only 2 earned runs, while Vaughan Harris returned to his midsession form throwing 6 1/3 innings of shutout ball.
We've won 3 games, now only 5 more wins to go.
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