Positives and Negatives

We blew a nine-run lead.

This is what has been sticking in my head over these past 24 hours or so following St. Mary's 20-9 victory over Tutt Middle School on Tuesday. This is what had me losing sleep last night, replaying the game in my head at two in the morning wondering about all the things we still need to do to get better as a ballclub and achieve our goals.

Call me crazy. Tell me my expectations are simply too high.

But here's the bottom line. We got lazy. We got complacent. We made a bunch of mental mistakes on the basepaths, made some errors on routine plays, missed a bunch of signs, and pitched behind in the count all day. And for three innings, our potent bats went silent.

Basically, we took a vacation for three innings. We stopped hustling. We stopped caring. We took things for granted. Big time.

When you're the 2007 St. Mary's Saints — a team that may very well be the most talented group of 15 middle school players in the entire CSRA — that's what you get. This team is scary good. As a result, the expectations are going to be high.

As a ballclub, our players no doubt should be proud of what we accomplished Tuesday. We redeemed ourselves with a 10-run sixth inning, and we tightened up defensively and on the mound over the final two innings. We showed we have a devastating lineup. We pitched well, at times, and we played solid enough defensively.

In the end, that was enough to get our record to 2-0 on the young season. In the end, it was enough to defeat a team that hasn't lost a game in five years and has won five straight Augusta-Richmond County public school championships.

But, again, for three innings, we were sloppy and overconfident. And it almost came back to haunt us. Tuesday proved that anything can happen over the course of a ballgame. No lead is safe. Like legendary New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra once said, "It ain't over 'til it's over."

If the games were played on paper, they'd hand us the championship trophy right now, because St. Mary's is by far the most talented team in our league.

But anything can happen in baseball — that's why they play the games.

Remember that on any given day, any team in our league is capable of beating us. Remember the second Curtis Baptist game last season? Remember the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey team against the Russians in Miracle? Remember what happened to St. Mary's in the basketball championship game against EDS this past January?

When all is said and done, we're proud of what our players accomplished this week. We opened with two straight wins against two of the best teams we will face all season.

But we're better than this. We're better than what we showed Tuesday.

From this point forward, let's not take anything for granted. Let's get back to work and make sure we don't lose sight of our ultimate goal.

Our team just defeated a local powerhouse by 11 runs without even giving it our very best.

How scary is that?