Saturday, September 6, 2008

Say Goodnight, Gracie... Round 2 truckin along (9/6)

Congratulations to WhiteSoxCards for doing some research and coming up with George Burns (hence the title, for those old enough to understand the reference, though it was a different GB). For his effort, WhiteSoxCards wins a 2001 Leaf Rookies and Stars Statistical Standouts Game-Used Opening Day Base Magglio Ordonez (ss-23)!! Excellent work!


Round 2 Match 1 - Chris(M) grabbed a game-tying run in his half of the inning, forcing Joey to send more of his players to the plate. If Joey can score a run here, he will join Dayf in the next round of action. If Chris(M) prevents a score from crossing the plate, THIS game will go into extra innings!

#5 Ian Kinsler steps up to the plate to lead things off. The pitcher is not going to let things end quickly or quietly, apparently. He gets Kinsler swinging for Wiffle Ball field, but only coming up whiffing... He goes down on strikes. That'll bring up #7 David Murphy to see if HE can make something happen. Here's the pitch. Murphy swings and pops the ball out to the left fielder who is under it for the out. Two up and to down. Are we looking at ANOTHER extra-inning game? #32 Josh Hamilton will try to prevent that from happening.

The pitcher throws. Hamilton takes the pitch and the ump calls a strike. The next gets delivered and Hamilton takes a swing. He connects! This ball is heading for the fans! It.....Is.... GONE! Hamilton knocks the ball out of the park for the game-winning run, keeping the game from going into extra innings! HO-LY COW!

Joey takes his Rangers to round three, and for his game-winning run, he also receives a 2002 Donruss New Generation 2002 Rookie Game-used jersey Travis "Pronk" Hafner (serial #238/500)! And even though he's been knocked out of the tournament, Chris(M) receives a 2001 Donruss Class of 2001 Scrapbook Game-used jersey Larry Walker (with pinstripe! serial #320/500, card SB-16)!


Round 2 Match 2 - Dayf pulled off an extra-inning win last night and he advances to Round Three. More details about Round Three action below...


Round 2 Match 3 - Erin's Orioles are still batting here in the bottom of the second inning. She's got runners on second and third, two outs, and leads ChrisB 5-2. Erin brings in Number 28, hoping she can keep the Orioles streak running. The pitcher throws, and ChrisB breathes a sigh of relief as Twenty-Nine hits the ball on the ground to the second baseman who fields over to first to end the inning.

ChrisB has got his work cut out for him going into the third inning. Since Erin is leading, Chris just needs to put all the remaining players in the batting order he'd like, and hope he catches up or takes over the lead before his three outs come up! This is going to be a hard inning to watch... Chris, put 'em in order: 06, 10, 16, 18, 20, 26, 29, 32


Round Three Info - I'm sure if you've been following along, at some point you must have seen what is about to happen here. Because of the number of players, this next round has an 'odd team out.' I have played out several scenarios on how to advance the tournament, given that in Round 2 Match 3 the winner has no one to play against! I considered a random "BYE" situation where one team would be chosen to automatically advance to the finals, but that didn't seem fair. I thought about having the team play against me, but again that didn't seem fair. So, here is my plan. I will hold a "mini round-robin" tournament-within-a-tournament! A WHAT!?

Here is the way this works: Joey, Dayf, and the winner of Match 3 (we'll call that person WM3) will play a series of ONE-INNING mini games. Each team plays twice. The two teams with the best records head to the championship. Here is the mini-bracket:

Joey vs Dayf
WM3 vs Joey
Dayf vs WM3

To speed things up, each visiting team (team listed on left) will choose TEN PLAYERS to bat for them in their respective games. The game plays exactly like the main tourney except there is only one inning! Yes, every player gets a 'bonus' card (though it will be a serial #'d card instead of game-used/auto) in every game played!

Round Three will start after Round Two is completed. Stay tuned to see how things turn out in the final game of Round Two!!

Oh, and for those of you that have already been eliminated from the main tourney, keep your eyes peeled! I have a surprise for you guys, too!

3 comments:

  1. 10, 26, 20, 18, 29, 16, 06, 32

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  2. David, you are really good at play by play commentary. Have you ever done it locally?

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  3. Heya! No, I haven't done any play-by-play, though many moons ago I was an on-air personality for a couple stations near where I went to college. I enjoy getting into these 'mock games' though. :-) I was hoping I wasn't coming off as too 'dorky.' :-)

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