Thursday, March 13, 2008

A Game of FIRSTS

So Kyle's FIRST game as a high school student was full of FIRSTS.

Kyle did not start in his FIRST game. Nick, whom you may or may not remember as the fastest thrower in Joshua's league (on the Yankees) in his first season with the Cubs, started. He throws incredibly hard and can throw about 5-6 different pitches. But that also leads to control problems. He ended up giving up 4 runs in 2 innings.

Kyle made his FIRST pitching appearance in the THIRD inning. He got his FIRST strike-out on his FIRST batter - swinging. His SECOND inning pitched he pulled another FIRST with a three pitch inning - three easy pop-ups on the infield. He ended up getting the first two outs of the third inning, but it was apparent that he was getting tired. The next batter was his FIRST walk. The following batter was the FIRST hit he gave up. He then walked his SECOND batter on four pitches to load the bases. The coach came to the mound and I really thought that was going to be the end of his outing, but the coach encouraged him to suck it up and get one more out to finish the inning. The batter complied by popping up to second.

As for coming to the plate, his FIRST at-bat resulted in his FIRST strike out. It wasn't pretty as he got badly fooled by a curve ball in the dirt. However in his SECOND at-bat he got his first SINGLE - a blooper over the third baseman's head. A runner on second tried to score (we were looking for the FIRST RBI), but he was thrown out at home plate.

The Panthers defeated the Bearcats 8-4 and Kyle was the winning pitcher! A very nice start to the FIRST game of the Kuest boy's season.

2 comments:

AZDonna said...

Wow, Kyle! What a great game. Wish I could have been there cheering you on myself.

Dean, your descriptions almost make me feel like I was there. Great job, both of you!

gpjbean said...

We are looking forward to this blog as we have been hungry for Kuest baseball news in the past. We miss being able to go to the games, but the Lord's work has us out and about - right now we are in Thailand for another two weeks.

As we told Kyle in an earlier email, the only way we could have been prouder is to have been there.

I remember when we used to cheer for the Panthers when Dean was on the Peoria Panther varsity teams in baseball and wrestling. He won the coaches 110% award during his senior year in baseball. So, it is back to yelling, "Go Panthers!"