T7LA Softball Tournament Recap

by Darren Meenan October 02, 2017

Thank you to everyone who made it out to Brooklyn on Saturday for our inaugural charity softball tournament. We helped raise money for Tuesday's Children, and those of us who played got to take some swings where the future Mets move up the ranks.

The one thing that put a damper on the event was a few teams who didn't follow the rules. Not quite sure where NO EXISTING ORGANIZED TEAMS was lost in translation, but we had a lot of that. It was plastered on every email, the sign up form, and we spoken about it weekly on Orange and Blue Thing.

Out of the 16 teams, it seemed at least half of them fielded players from their existing squads. The "winners" didn't even attempt to change their team name.

After monsters started showing up in the morning rocking Cubs, Pirates, Yankees, Orioles, White Sox, Marlins, and Tigers caps, I knew that, for them, it wasn't about fun. They came to win, and didn't care that the whole point of the thing was to have fun with our fellow Mets fans.

Our team, Too Sweet, was managed by Brian Erni, and got 2nd place. We are all Mets fans (kinda the whole point of this thing), and none of our players have ever played softball together. I don't feel so bad because we lost, but more so that our friends on other teams didn't get a fair shake. At least we played well enough to get four games in.

It was a learning experience, and for year one, we did the best we could. We took people at their word, and unfortunately, they ruined that, so back to the drawing board for year two.

Thanks to Greg Conway and the Cyclones for working so hard on this event, and to Keith Blacknick for organizing the behind the scenes details with me. Keith was also able to collect some great raffle items and raised an additional $1,000 for Tuesday's Children. Great job to him, Mike Mehan, and Kristine Blacknick for running the auction.

We'll change the format for year two and we hope you'll come down for another fun (and fair) day.

Oh yea, congrats Kevin and Karen on their engagement!