So I’ve tried all kinds of things to help my pitching. One of the things Nolan had been trying to get me to try was a change-up. He said he honestly didn’t see how I’d managed to get to where I am without one. So it’s something I was working on during spring training. We didn’t tell anybody because we wanted it to be a surprise. Well, I’ve surprised some guys with it, but I think I need to get a little more comfortable with it before i can legitimately say it’s part of my repertoire.

I don’t know what it is. I don’t want to make it sound like I’m blaming my teammates because I’m not. But something about being here seems to bring out the worst in me. I came here because of the promising situation but I’m here now and the promise lies unfulfilled. I know that I’m a good pitcher. Maybe not the best, but pretty damn good. But It doesn’t seem to make a difference. I can’t seem to pitch well here.

So, it’s not me. And it’s not the team (this team went to the Patriot Cup). It’s some sort of interaction between us. Like oil and water. Nothing wrong with either one, but they don’t work together well. It’s like there’s a missing ingredient. Something that could make it all work. I don’t know what it is. I love the boys and I think this is a great team. But i don’t feel like this is what anyone expected. It’s certainly not what anyone wants.

Right now my ERA is at 3.90. That’s under four so I’m not going to feel bad about it. That’s over three so I’m not going to feel good about it either. I’m 1-1 in five starts. I’ve pitched 32.1 innings and have 33 strikeouts. On the surface, that looks good. The thing is, I’m still thinking that I need to strike guys out. I’m not trusting my team to be there in the field for me. I’m working on it. This might be what I’m missing. Trust. And this goes both ways. Because of my record, the boys don’t trust me to pitch well and they try to make up for it at the plate. Too hard sometimes. I’m trying to build trust from my side, one pitch at a time. I’m trying to learn to trust them more and to make myself more trustworthy.

We’re cruising. There are a whole bunch of us, too many to name. But I have to mention a couple. The Doctor is here. So is Ali Hussain. And there’s a few young guys, too. Like Sean Mack in Boston. Mack is a little on the brash side, but he’s a good kid. He’ll be a good ballplayer someday, too. But he took the opportunity to drink a little once we were out of US waters. I think all the kids did.

While vacationing in the Bahamas (that’s fun to type), I’ve discovered Texas Hold ‘em. You’re wondering how someone could play professional baseball so long and not be familiar with poker. It’s not that. What I mean is, I’ve discovered it can be fun and not just a way to hand money over to Bear. Maybe that has to do with Bear not being along on the cruise. But it can actually be relaxing to play. And I’m half-decent at it so I’m not losing all my money but overall coming out about even.

The food here is wonderful. You always have your choice between three or four things. And that’s for each course. Salad, main dish and dessert. And they’ll let you get more than one if you ask. Yesterday I had chocolate cake and a cheese tray (chocolate goes great with cheese, especially dark chocolate).

Overall, I’m having fun. I’m past the depression I went through after we lost the Patriot Cup. Ryan said he was proud of us and we exceeded his expectations. I don’t think he meant me. I fell vastly short of what I expected. But Nolan told me that sometimes you have a down year. That it’s not that you’re bad, but that your luck isn’t there. And it’s especially hard when you’re a pitcher because you don’t participate in the offense. He also pointed out that I earned incentives. So I did some things quite well. Got strikeouts, for example. Things will be different this season. I’m sure of it. And I can smile again. It’s a great feeling.

It’s over.

The Patriot Cup is over and we won. At home. And I’m sure there are still some people celebrating. They’re going to have a parade for us. Through downtown Hartford Tomorrow. And the mayor will be there. It’s wonderful being a champion.

It’s also a bit sad. I went in to clean out my locker today. And I thought how it was different this time. Not because we’re champions. But because I may not be back. I looked around the ‘Hawks clubhouse and thought about how it may be the last time I see it. That next time I play at Rolex Field I might be wearing road grays instead of home whites.

But the season is over and it’s time to look at my goals and see how I’ve done. Goal #1 was to win seventeen games. I won twelve more than that. Goal #2 was to have my ERA be below three. It’s 2.13. So I got that, too. And my last goal was kinda vague. It was to have more strikeouts than last year. 309 is definitely more than 234. So I achieved that, too.

2012 was a good year for me. And for the ‘Hawks. I honestly didn’t expect to pitch as well as I did. Every pitcher has good games sometimes. Games where everything just clicks. Well, I just had a yearful of good games. I’d like to believe that next year will be the same. But I’m not slacking off. I’ll work out over the winter and throw some and keep myself in shape for next year. I wanna be the best I can be.

Wherever I pitch.

At the beginning of the year I had a couple of goals. Well, three goals. First, I’d have seventeen wins. Next, I’d have an ERA below three. And finally, I’d have more strikeouts than last year.

Well, it’s only three weeks past the All-Star break. And I’m getting it done. I have my seventeen wins, my ERA is under two and I’m projected to get over 300 strikeouts. This is a wonderful feeling. Like dancing on a cloud.

Skip says he’s proud of me. He also says he knew I could do it. He said I might win 25 if I keep this up. He’s very careful not to say that part of how I got it done was the 4-man rotation. I am aware of that, though. But I also have only two losses. So it’s not just that I’m getting all those extra starts. It’s also that I’m pitching better and the boys are backing me up with their bats.

And I cannot say how much I appreciate the run support. Neal has it really rough in Elmira right now. Not so long ago, he went eight innings and didn’t give up an earned run but got tagged with a loss. And that’s the sort of thing that happens when your boys aren’t hitting the ball.

I think seventeen is worth celebrating. This is the third year I’ve tried to achieve it. I think steaks are appropriate. Big ones. Like at Max. I’m taking the boys. Without them, I couldn’t've done it. Jay and i can have our own private celebration when Allentown gets here. And maybe I’ll have eighteen then.

I’d wake up at night with the smell of the ballpark in my nose, the cool of the grass on my feet…

Shoeless Joe says that in the movie “Field of Dreams”. That’s what it’s like the week before spring training. Though it’s not the grass for me, but the mound. And now we’re here! It’s been an eventful winter but we’re all ready to play ball again. Pitchers and catchers have been here for awhile and the rest of the boys have been trickling in. Tomorrow’s the first day that they’re all required to be here. And so now the entire bunch has arrived.

This should be a good year for us. Last year was a fluke and I really believe we can go all the way. And the boys all believe it, too. And I think that’s going to be our slogan. Believe it! I know we have a lot of doubters, but we’ll show them.

This year I’m working on my movement. I want my breaking pitches to break better than they have been. Shaner says there’s a few things I can try. That it’s a combination of how I hold the ball and how I release it. So we’re making adjustments. And they seem to be working. I won’t know until I get into a real game with real hitters.

And I also need to polish my control. A lot of people think it’s about hitting the strike zone. Control isn’t about putting the ball in the strike zone–it’s about putting the ball where you want it. The strike zone is big enough that you should be able to target a specific area. And that’s something I could use some improvement on.

I miss Jay. But the season starts in a few weeks, and we’ll have a chance to see each other. Duke thinks I’m nuts. I think maybe some of the other boys do, too, but they’re nice enough to keep their opinions to themselves. Duke was in love with me for awhile and he somehow thinks he needs to look out for me. I’m a big girl. I can look out for myself.

It’s been said that there’s no crying in baseball. That may be true, but there’s certainly other kinds of carrying on. Yelling things at people. Kicking things. Throwing things. I said once before that this sort of behavior doesn’t impress Skip. It still doesn’t. But right now we’re a pretty unimpressive team.

Every year that I’ve been playing here–every year that I’ve been playing pro ball–we’ve gone to the playoffs. We did again this year. But then we couldn’t get it done. We choked. And Ben Thompson and the rest of his Bangor gang (er, Halifax) are bound for the championship series.

Patriot Cup or Bust! We busted. We never even had a chance to face Alex Williams and Darth O’Rourke. We couldn’t play good enough ball to get past the Thunder.

So that’s how the season ends for me. With a playoff loss. And I’m alone. I don’t think I could be more miserable right now. Shaner says that sometimes you lose. He pointed out the fact that the bullpen gave up runs, too. And that we lost three games, not one. So it’s not all on me.

I don’t feel any better though. There’s a thing called the butterfly effect. How the air currents stirred by a butterfly’s wings can become a storm under the right conditions. Maybe it’s like that. Some little thing that doesn’t look all that significant turned out to be what made it all happen that way. It could be a strike call or a safe call. Whatever. That’s why they say it’s a game of inches. Well, inches add up to miles and we lost by a mile.

And I’m alone. I cannot adequately describe how I feel. There’s a big Matty-sized hole in my life. We shouldn’t be together, but that doesn’t make me miss him any less. No more calls. No more text messages. No more IMs. No more hugs. No more blondies. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to try again.

These players were selected for the AC OOTP-Allstar Team :
P Chris Ball from Hartford
P Casey Lane from Hartford
P Shannon Young from Hartford
P Ryan Moore from Hartford
P Luke Kennedy from Hartford
P Ike Smith from Hartford
C Pierre LaVillenuve from Hartford
3B Jesse Vargas from Hartford
LF Michael LeClair from Hartford
RF David Ramirez from Hartford
CF Grady Chalmers from Hartford
3B Brad Wilgus from Hartford

And some guys from other teams, too. But that’s practically a whole team right there. Another middle infielder and we’d be able to do it cuz Hottie can play MI. That’s pretty darned impressive.

And you notice, I’m there too. Well, I was Pitcher of the Month for April but lately I’ve been struggling. It feels good to be chosen. It helps me remember that everyone struggles sometimes but that the great ones pick themselves up. That’s what I’m trying to do.

Speaking of picking up and moving on, someone e-mailed me and asked how I could play on the same team as Billy Madison. Look, he made a mistake. He looked at me and saw a girl, not a pitcher who was his teammate. He’s not ever going to see me like that again so I’d bet money that he doesn’t ever lay another hand on me. If I lose, I get the opportunity to kick his ass. He may have 40 pounds on me, but Alex taught me to fight and to fight dirty.

Baseball is a game of skill. And the more skill you have, the better you’re able to perform on the field. There are a variety of specialized skills required for fielding each of the various positions as well as hitting and pitching.

Our team has mad baseball skillz. If you look at the leaderboard for batting average, you’ll see that six of the ten men on that list belong to the Hartford Oceanhawks. And four memebers of our rotation are on the leaderboard for earned run average. We have 38 wins and 12 losses. That’s the best record in the league.

But baseball is also a game of luck. How many runs the boys are able to put up for you depends a lot on how lucky they are at stringing hits together. Well, I have the best boys in the league. Look at the leaderboards. But I also have five no-decisions. And Billy Madison has six.

In my last two games I pitched 14.2 innings. And gave up one earned run. But got two no-decisions. Sometimes it just works that way.

The thing about it is that we’re a third of the way through the season. If things keep on like this, I’m on a pace for a 12-3 record. So much for my 17 games. And it’s not that I lack the skill. It’s that I lack the luck.

Casey posted this in our clubhouse:

To all of my Hartford teammates,

Recently there has been a lot of trash talk going on around this clubhouse. And it’s not the kind where we tell the world that the ‘Hawks are the best. Or that other teams suck. Not the kind that brings the team together to fight a common foe.

No, this is the other kind of trash talk. The kind where ballplayers say things about their teammates. This is the kind of talk that tears a ballclub apart.

And I thought that everyone here wanted to win us a Patriot Cup this year. I was under the strong impression that that was our goal.

How are we going to pull together to defeat Elmira if we’re busy trying to tear each other down? The answer is, we can’t.

I’m not asking you to like everybody on this team. I just want you to treat everyone with respect. On and off the field. If we can do that, we can win. It’s that simple.

If you want to talk trash, fine. But not about the guys in your dugout. Talk about the guys in the other dugout. Talk about how we’ll bring them down.

Because if we work together, as a team, we WILL prevail. We WILL win that Cup. And we will become a part of history as the team that took Elmira down.

Patriot Cup or Bust!

Well, it turns out that hole in the outfield was David Ramirez-shaped. Everyone thought he was going to Allentown to play for Annie and that lunatic but It turns out Ramirez didn’t know about the lunatic and he refuses to play for him. Skip was able to sign him and now our outfield is complete.

So Skip said, maybe Matty could learn SS. Okay, whatever it takes to be in the bigs. Turns out that was bogus too. Skip ran out of money signing big-name guys so he had none left for small-name guys like Miatty.

So Matty picked up and moved on. Instead of Ramirez playing in Allentown, it’ll be Matty. Matty will probably start as a backup though. I’m concerned about him. He’s just the sort of young guy that Annie would be into. “You want more playing time? I can give you more playing time if you’ll do a little something for me.” I think that’s how Aaron Jacobs stayed in the rotation for so much of 2008. He was 5-11. Annie is a predator. I would rather Matty sign with anyone else.

Let me tell you about David Ramirez. His bat has some pop in it, but his main asset is that he’s fast and sure on the basepaths. He strikes out about three times as often as he walks. Defensively, well his range is only average, but he converts the balls he gets to into outs. He was on a bunch of leaderboards in 2009. With him and Mike and Grady we should definitely be set. With a good team around him, DR’s numbers should be solid and he should be back on the leaderboards in 2011.

Oh, and while I’m talking about him, David Ramirez is hot. His dark skin and beautiful dark eyes are definitely worth taking a second look. He’s well-built, like any ballplayer. Good muscles. And he moves with grace, like many speedy guys. Very fluid. So ladies, check him out. He needs a nickname, though. I’m thinking of calling him “the doctor” because his initials are DR. And because he can give you a shot in the arm.

And about Matty. Sometimes things happen for the best. I’ve never been in a position where I was dating a teammate. Maybe it’s a good thing that I’m not now. Although I want to spend every moment with Matty, it’s cutting into my workouts. And that can’t be good. When I was seeing Neal we’d sometimes be apart for a month and it was all okay. This is different. I’ll manage though.