Personal Glimpse: Rhys Talks Baseball

May+of+2017%3B+Rhys+Atkinson

Carscallen

May of 2017; Rhys Atkinson

Two weeks ago we went in to playing Central Catholic after splitting a series 1-1 with Reynolds. Two weeks later and we were tied for second place with the Gresham Gophers, battling for a first place spot in the conference.

Now first, I’ll have you know that we haven’t swept Central Catholic in a series in a very long time, if not ever. In fact our oldest coach Rocky Rodriguez says, “I have been here for a very long time, and we never swept the Rams. You guys are the first.”

But we didn’t just stop with one sweep. The next week we came out against the David Douglas Scots, and swept them too. Somehow, although they are 0-21 this season, and ranked 48th in the state of Oregon, they gave us more of a difficult time than the Rams did while we beat them 2-1, 6-3, and 6-0.

Also, Dawson Day finally started hitting homeruns this year, hitting one 2-run homer against the Rams, one solo shot against the Scots, and one solo shot this week against the Gophers. Not to mention, Justin Funkhouser also got a 2-run homer in our last home game against Gresham, which gave us a 2-1 lead in the third inning, which technically won the game for us because we couldn’t hit the ball after that.

While we definitely were competing with Gresham throughout the whole series, they got the best of us winning two out of the three games we played, 12-4, and 3-1. In the first game, they got up early 6-1, but we came back in the sixth inning narrowing the gap to two runs. Unfortunately, our defense turned into “efense,” as they put up six more runs in the top of the seventh inning.

In the second game, Furby pitched a great game, but as we could not hit the ball to save our lives, our only run was Dawson’s solo shot home run.

Last night though, Dawson pitched a terrific game, in which should have been scoreless, but Brendan Ritschard couldn’t catch my throw down to tag Gresham’s bag thief, Tyler Lynch, in which he was the only runner to score for the Gophers. Obviously, I was a little heated about that.
To end the game there was a runner on third for the Gophers, looking for any chance he had to steal home. While I was more nervous than I had been all season, I let a ball get by, and off the runner took. I felt like I was in slow motion, as I sprinted towards the ball, picked it up and without looking I back handed it straight to our pitchers glove for the tag. Of course the home crowd went wild, and it was probably the best feeling a catcher could ever get.