Saturday, April 16, 2011

THE 2011 HURTIN' UNITS...

Welcome to the 2011 edition of the Captain's blog! I was actually debating, with myself again this season, whether or not to do a blog, but I have decided to do it in a more condensed version. If you have anything (i.e. photos, stories, etc.) you might like to add to the website or the blog, I'm more than willing to put them in.

It's been almost seven months since The Wild won the championship. For those new or returning players to the league, the Wild won the Championship for the second year in a row, the first time this has been done in the league's 25 year history. Our new teammate Kevin Moon was on the 2009 Wild Championship team and he was on the Dodge City Rounders last season, the team that went to the finals against the Wild.

For those of you who don't know, the Hurtin' Units won the league title for regular season play. In 26 regular season games played, the Hurtin' Units had 19 wins, 5 losses and 2 ties for a total of 40 points, just edging out the Brew Jays by 2 points. The playoffs were not as kind to the Units, we got off to a rough start getting our asses kicked in the first two games. The Units did manage a couple of wins and squeaked ourselves into the elimination round. We had defeated The Wild in round robin play, but faced them again late on the Saturday, in the elimination round, but lost in a very close game by a score of 18-15. The Wild never lost another game and went on to defeat the Dodge City Rounders in the finals...

This season the Hurtin' Units have a new logo. Last year nobody could figure out what the heck was on our shirts, so we decided to make a change. We passed along two different logos to the screen printer, the one to the right and another of a baseball player in some pain. Our first choice is the robot smoking a cigar. Our shirts are the same colour as last season, Royal Blue and we are asking for a yellow lettering, but the printer may not be able to come through for us... I say just surprise us, Bender or the Guy in Pain, yellow or white lettering, whatever we get will be just fine, it's the guys wearing the shirts that matters...

The Hurtin' Units captain's blog will be a site where teammates can view a brief game summary, game score and game highlights as I've viewed them. I will only write about the positive events of each game or if something is humorous and/or needs to be mentioned it may be thrown in.

Last year I blogged every game the Hurtin' Units played, some were boring, some were a little humorous and some were reflections of how I was feeling at different points in the season. If you scroll down the page you will find last years blogs starting with the playoffs and working back all the way to 2010 draft day. 

In 2007 I played for the Rusty Rebels and also blogged every game, including playoffs and tournaments. If you would like to view the Rebels blog go to http://www.rustyrebels.blogspot.com/.


I'm looking forward to the start of this new season. In 2010 we had a great group of guys, we had a good time all season and it reflected in the standings. Last season was the first year that Mike and I were captains and even though we did well, we were still learning. We now have a some experience to draw from and we hope we can make your upcoming season a fun and memorable one.

We were very fortunate to have gotten such a great bunch of guys last season, with guys like Tom Perry, Jens Lepa, Jerry Wallace, Al Hayward, etc, etc. it made coming to the diamond something we looked forward to doing every week. I enjoyed playing ball with Tom so much last season, I made a trophy for the " Most Sportsmanlike Player " on the Hurtin' Units and Tom was the team's first winner.

Looking at this year's roster, I think we have come out of the draft with a great mix of players that will make this upcoming season as great as the last...

I look forward to playing will all you guys this season.


Cheers, Jimmer