Undefeated after the All Star break

Well, that's what I've come to call the last five days we had off because of the rain. Our very own All Star Break. We had a refreshing rain to make the grass greener and to rest up some guys who were banged up. Unfortunately, we opened up with the Junction City Generals who are pretty good and have been playing games when we could not. So we traveled out to Junction City, Kansas for our first game in a week.

We had our best pitcher on the hill, Ben Shockey, who has a sub 2.5 ERA yet we can't score any runs when he pitches. And wouldn't you know it, he holds the Generals to two runs over 7 innings, but leaves with a 2-0 deficit. Looks like we're going to keep the losing streak going to six games. But wouldn't you know it, in the eighth we come back to tie the game at 2 and go on to win in extra innings 4-2. What a great way to start our week! The guys played good defense and put together quality at-bats to steal a game from a good team. Our bullpen did a tremendous job with three scoreless innings to put the game away. It felt good to win again and get back in the left side of the column.

Had an interesting dilemma in the eighth inning as the coaching staff tried to figure out a lineup change. Our first string catcher is hurt and couldn't play, so we had to move our DH to catch after pinch-hitting for our starting catcher. We also pinch hit for our right fielder and brought in a new pitcher. So we had to move our pitcher to hit for our catcher as the pinch-hitter moved to right field. However, this was an educated guess and after conferring with the umpire we made the right moves. Did you follow that? Me either! It was one of the hardest lineup changes I've ever made and was made that difficult because of our lack of depth on our bench.

I'm learning this summer as well. We have 5 games in the next four days. Another great test to see what we're made of.