GSWS Austin Day Two

Day two, a dozen or so of the hundreds of games scheduled for this week were played. The four game round robin portion of the world series was cancelled. So the double elimination tournament is all we've got left which means almost two hundred teams and thousands of players who paid many hundreds of dollars for the travel and week-long hotel stay will not get to play the 6 games minimum that the world series usually guarantees. Last year we played 11 games as we made it to the 7th place game. We finished 6th when one of the teams ahead of us was eliminated due to a protest. The top few teams in each division usually are playing above their normal skill level and some actually have players who are under-rated so there is a protest process where one team can challenge the rating of a player or players based on the ratings questions. Each city provides some ratings committee members. I was one of Orlando's representatives, but we had no protests in the first few games.

The seeding, usually decided by the round robin games, was decided by a random draw and team ratings. That created seriously unfair match-ups and some of the better teams had to play each other and moved into the losers bracket when they would probably not have had the rain not cancelled so many games. Most teams, including us, did not get to play on day two because only a few of the twenty fields were reasonably playable. Rains came in the afternoon to cancel the second half of the scheduled games.

Our first game is 11:05am tomorrow.

We walked to the Capitol Building and wandered around. A scene from Best Little Whorehouse in Texas was filmed in that building (dance scene in the rotunda, if you recall the film). We walked around downtown some more, getting wet, then went to dinner. Manuel's Mexican restaurant across the street from the Marriott was very good. We found a grocery store afterward for snacks and drinks and headed back to the hotel. Some of the team went out drinking because that is what most of the league does, but I stayed in and actually turned on the TV.

Ghost is one of those movies that wrap me up in my deepest romantic dreams and turns me inside out and leaves me wasted in a puddle of my own emo. I decided to watch while Beav was out drinking. Emo, definitely. Dreaming of a love like the love that was the heart of that story is the reason I live, though it would be hard to tell if you did not read my rhymes. I've gotten very good at distracting myself and enjoying the superficial fun to be found most anywhere. Too good at it for my heart's sake. Alas, the rain is dampening more than the fields.

So what are you up to?