Last Week vs. Mendoza and All-Star game

It's been pretty cold and wet this whole week, maybe a few days of sun. We played a six game series with Mendoza, and ended up splitting the series, 3-3, each. All of the games were hard and long, they are in second place behind us, and we live in the same hotel as them. As one may suspect things got a little heated in the fifth game of the series, the benches cleared and some words were exchanged. Nothing happened, but that will set an interesting tone during playoffs. The next month should be real friendly around the hotel with them, but around playoff time it should start picking up. During the week I had two huge ideas about hitting, and they have been proving to be very helpful. The first is to ignore the pitchers windup until his arm starts forward, that's when the hitter gets ready to hit, but before that the hitter should be nice and relaxed. I was getting sped up in some of my AB's because of the jerky moves of a few pitchers. The other idea is where the hands start. They should start in a relaxed position, with no tension, and should stay there until you react to hit the ball, no extra move up or extra tension. Both of these ideas are huge because they allow the hitter to see the ball longer and react quicker and with more accuracy. Hopefully I will be able have complete understanding of these ideas by the time I come home, so I can share them with all of my students.
Last week was not all good, I rolled my ankle on Saturday and sometimes Spanish is kicking my butt. I sat out the game on Sunday, but still had an awesome performance. I was able to lead another Baseball Chapel. My main focus is to try to get everyone focused on their purpose, and I gave the team this scripture, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mathew 22:37-39) I then explained to the guys what love is. The message was much better this time. If anyone would like to see my notes from the Chapel service, I would be more than happy to send them to you. Now the Spanish is getting better, but it is still hard to get everything out like I want to, especially with girls. Hopefully I'll keep getting better, haha...
After the series with Mendoza me and seven other players from my team took off for Xalapa for the All-Star game. We had dinner and recieved a plaque on Wednesday night and last night we played the game. I started in centerfield and lead off. I didn't do much in the game, but the our team won in the ninth to give the team on our side in the finals homefield advantage. It was a fun couple of days, check out the pictures I added to photobucket. After the All-Star festivities and the benches clearing I can really see how close my team is. We are good people, who play hard, respecting the game and each other. This is awesome to be a part of and the other teams better watch out. We got rained out today, but hopefully tomorrow we will be able to continue our strong season. I hope everything is going good for everyone back in the states, I really don't know much about what's going on with everyone. Shoot me an e-mail and let me know. Talk to yall later.
Dom