On being "that" team

Well, it's playoff time for the Twin Shores Church Softball league. This is my 4th year playing in the league, and every year, the playoffs have been marked by the presence of "that" team. When I refer to "that" team, I'm talking about the team that didn't have a particularly stellar record, and is thus of a lower playoff seed that shows up in a big way. What further distinguishes that team is that they have their opponents (well, us I guess, because I can't speak for the rest of the teams in the league) saying "Man, they weren't that good when we played them the first time" and "I don't remember those guys from the regular season." The implication of that being that said team had a few guys show up "just" for the playoffs. And the fact is, this would be essentially permissible in our league. The only requirement for playoff eligiblity is that your name appear on the roster by mid-season (and that you meet the requirements for participation in the league to begin with, obviously). There is no minimum number of games to be played in the regular season, none of that. So, the playoff "ringer", while certainly not something that would be looked on with the most favor, is pretty much legit in our league.

The reality is that this perception is generally mostly a reaction to a defeat against a team you expected to beat (which was probably part of the problem to begin with). Last year, after losing to "that" team in our first playoff game, people were talking about it. No so much when we can back around and beat them in the championship. And to be honest, after the competitive fires fade away in the postgame, there's never been a team that I've seriously suspected of abusing the rules. There have been teams that have made me wonder, however.

I have a fresh perspective on that now, however, because in the 2008 "A" divsion playoffs, McBIC is "that" team. We were the B champions last year, we came up to A and scuffled our way to an 18-18 record, which left us 6th out of 10 teams. The top 2 teams in the regular season got a bye into the double elimination "final four", leaving the remaining 8 to duke it out in single elimination for the last two spots. That gave us the 4th seed for the single elimination portion. We show up last night and handle the #5 seed 13-7, and then tonight we absolutely throttled the #2 seed, 14-2 in 6 innings. With the team we've run out there thus far, and expect to have for the remainder of the playoffs, we look like a clear favorite to play for the championship, and with a legit shot to win it. I'm sure our opponents (and especially tonight's opponent - during the season we beat them by 1 run on two occasions, lost to them by a run on another, and they beat us by like 15 in the 4th game) have been thinking "Man, they weren't that good before" and "Did we see that guy before?"

And on the first point, they'd be right, we didn't play this well much of the season. They'd probably also be right on the second point, as I'm sure we were missing a few of the guys that played the last two nights every time we played them. But, as has now been driven home to me with the role reversal, that doesn't mean that we brought guys in for the playoffs - it means that we have all our best players at once, which, despite all of them being pretty regular, was a rare occurance in the regular season. We played 36 regular season games, and checking our stats, we had one guy who only played 15 and another who only played 16 in our 11 man lineup the last two nights. Everyone else played 20 or more, and many played 30 or more. It just seems that on most nights, we were missing one or two key guys who help make us click at peak efficiency. And also, during the regular season, I was always doing my best to make sure everyone who showed up got a fair amount of playing time, so even if we had our best, or close to our best, there, they weren't always in the game. We proved our capabilities in the regular season, however. Underneath our .500 overall record, we were 3-1 against the #2 and #3 regular season teams. It just so happened we caught them on some our best personnel nights.

Really, the point had mostly been driven home to me throughout the season. We played each team 2 nights this year, as opposed to just one in the past. As a result, on more than one occasion we saw two very different versions of a particular team on the different nights we played them, and we were definitely very different from night to night against certain teams. However, finally being on the other side of the coin cemented my understanding.

So, I want to apologize to all of "those" teams that I and my team might have previously had bad attitudes about, but who were really just in the same kind of very legitimate situation that we are this year. But, on the chance that there were any of "those" teams who had actual ringers, well, you just suck.