International Good Will

On our off day today, things began to become a little clearer.  We will play Colombia and Cuba on Wednesday and Thursday and and should we win both games, we?ll play for the championship on Saturday, most likely against Venezuela.  That?s our challenge and we will be up to it.  As it normally does, a USA-Cuba game will have a say in who gets to play for the gold, and that?s exciting.  We had practice scheduled for 11am, but got off to a bit of a late start because we had invited a youth team to

come to the park so we could give them some baseball gloves provided by coach Don Freeman.  The problem was that we had about 20 gloves but there were over 30 kids.  We pictured tears when thinking about some kids getting a glove and others not, so we divided the kids into two groups and devised a relay race to determine who would get the gloves.  After a demonstration by coach Hatch, the kids were ready to go and it went very well.  The team that didn?t get gloves got brand new USA Baseballs and everyone went away happy.  It was then on to practice where the team worked on some fundamentals and ended with a hitting competition to bring some fun into the session.  After practice we showered up and then met  the parents at Pizza Hut for a late lunch and then it was off to the Hilton with the parents for some relaxation.  They had gone on a shopping spree earlier in the day and loaded the kids up with Gatorade and other goodies, and I can?t thank them enough for their generosity.  I went upstairs and blogged away but snapped a shot of the group before the kids returned to our slightly less posh surroundings at the Villa.  Tomorrow we look to take care of Colombia and then it?s time to focus on our biggest game so far against the Cubans.