A Bad Day at the Office

Well the honeymoon is now over and reality has set in. We really took a beating today against Team Canada. We lost 10-0 in 8 innings. It was a 0-0 game entering the 4th inning when all of the lug nuts came off of the wheels. Our players were absolutely nervous and it affected our play. I went out to talk to our best left hander and he was white as a sheet. He then threw a pick off into centerfield, we had the base runner dead has he made a move to third during the pick off. All we had to do was catch the ball. That would have been the second out and then he struck out the next hitter. He had the next guy 0-2 and then threw 4 really bad curve balls. The first went behind the hitter enabling the runner from third to score and then hit him 2 pitches later. It got worse from then on. It was a close game that turned to a laugher in a hurry. We misplayed a couple of crucial balls (routine for a little leaguer) and the game was out of reach. It really was a shame, they had worked so hard on their game and they were actually not bad.
The crowd was really excited. They have never played a game in the Olympics and they were cheering at everything, balls, strikes, foul balls….basically anything that moved. It would be helpful to understand the mindset of these athletes. Their normal crowd to watch them play in the China Baseball League is about 10 people. Playing in front of 10,000 people cheering for you is quite overwhelming. The game is going about 100 mph in their heads. This environment is very foreign to them. It would be like you were the first person to land on the moon and then be asked to remember what you had for dinner last week. Things just do not process normally in those extreme environments. So having said that, I was certainly not surprised by the actions of our players, I can understand where they are at. It was just disappointing to watch them play like that when they are sooooo much better than the way they played.