I don’t often have very memorable dreams but last night I had a doozy. It pertains to my baseball coaching days. And it was remarkably vivid. My sleep patterns have been a bit off this week with the bronchitis and all.
In the dream, our team, the Choppers, had advanced to the semifinals of the Knox County tournament. As luck would have it, we were scheduled to face our biggest rivals from our own league.
Over the years we played them, the two teams waged some great battles (in REAL life). Funny thing. They ALWAYS changed their team name - every season. So, it’s not like I can say “Our Rivals, The Wildcats.” But, for the purposes of this blog posting, we’ll call them “Wildcats.”
I remember many competitive games vs. The Cats.
In fact, by my records, we won 8 against them and they won 8 against us. We won most of the spring match-ups when we were at full strength and they won most of the fall games when we had fewer of our regular players.
But no matter when we played, the games were always well played, generally close and very spirited.
So, all of that information is the background for my dream. The other bit of background is they liked to talk. We weren’t big talkers. We just played our game. They liked playing games. And they LOVED to chatter.
Another thing…they didn’t really like to swing the bat. They had a bunch of small guys (with small strike zones), on their team so they tried to play the odds and work for walks. Not a bad strategy if it works.
My son, Paul - one of our pitchers - wasn’t buying it. He never wanted to pitch against them because he found that very frustrating. He was a pretty good lefty pitcher and I loved watching him pitch…but he just preferred to pitch against other teams. I don’t think he faced the Wildcats at all the last three years we played.
All of that plays into the background of this dream.
In the dream, our team had taken the field to warm up before the game. Paul was on the mound taking some warm-up tosses and his good friend and one of our catchers, Ryan, was warming him up as catcher. The Wildcats were no where to be found - apparently doing their pre-game warm-up ritual elsewhere.
Finally, they showed up and their players and coaches kind of ambled out on to the field and made their way over to watch Paul pitch and Ryan catch. One of their most talkative players says (for everyone in the park to hear) “I’m glad its Paul that is pitching against us tonight. He never wants to pitch against us. We’ll beat him for sure.”
Hearing that, I pulled my assistant coaches aside and said (remembering the fact I mentioned earlier) “You know…he’s right. We ought to go with Will instead.’ They concurred.
Will was another one of our best pitchers - another lefty. And he always pitched well against the Cats. So, we asked for Will to come over and he quickly warmed up and readied himself to start the game on the mound.
He proceeded to pitch a wonderful game.
Ryan, so fired up by the pre-game antics, had a great game (even went yard). And the Choppers won the game - advancing to the County Tourney finals - by the score of 7-2.
Presumably, Paul would’ve pitched that next game…but the dream didn’t extend to the following day. But what a vivid (and quite accurate) dream it was while it lasted.
Must’ve been the meds!
JG
Originally posted 1/8/2012
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