There was hail. There was snow. There was warm. There was cold. There was sun. There was rain. There were strike outs, and there were home runs! Members of six teams showed up for yesterday's Pitchers and Hitters scrimmage, picked up teams and had an absolute blast, even if only a couple blasts were hit. You can really feel the season getting close now and everyone is getting excited. This season is going to be something special and an endless amount of fun. Butler beat VCU, so Alex is happy, and a bunch of the guys sat around a bonfire into the early morning hours BSing, lambasting, making plans, and getting blurry... There was American Pickers action for a minute, and then grown men chasing each other around a ping-pong table. That happened.
Many league rookies took advantage and are coming along very well, showing tremendous promise on both sides of the ball; including Chris Lewis and Marc Strawser who look to form a very formidable 1-2 punch for the Belgian Wiffles pitching staff. Dennis Pearson (Git r' Done) is hitting mid-70s regularly and got up to 80mph with surprising command on the mound and Maclin Malloy (Westside Warriors) hit 76mph a few times in his first outing of the year. Across the league both the velocity and stuff being featured on the mound seem to be a step up from 2010. Swing and miss strike outs are still a little more frequent than we expect them to be during the season, but as a whole batters are already taking better rips and looking more confident and poised in the box. The pitchers are definitely ahead of the curve at this point: spotting balls on the corners with good command and movement even in the cooler temperatures we have had (mid 40s this weekend).
After seeing many of WSEM's players over the last couple weekends Carl has written up 8 observations in this week's return of Coffee Time; sort of a scouting continuation of his 8 predictions from earlier this year, and in one or two cases maybe a revision thereof. That serves as a good segue into this week's videos. We put up four today, and will have a few more done throughout the week with highlights, in-game action, and random incidents and shenanigans. Check out a star pitcher on the mound, a sick pitch at 1:26, and some of the guys calling out one of the season's early predictions below, as well as the rest of the videos at http://youtube.com/wiffleinsemi.
Finally, wrapping up today's news cycle, one observation from yesterday not included in the Coffee Time post is that we finally have the Westside Warriors proper logo up on the website!
