The Mighty Orioles!

Southeastern Cal Ripken Rookie League Orioles 2007

American League Regular Season Champions (14-1)
Tournament Runner-Up

What a season! It will be difficult to top Trey's first year playing Rookie League ball (coach pitch 7 & 8 year-olds).

It all began back in early March with tryouts. Here's what I wrote to our parents on March 4. "All the new players were required to try out. We all headed down to this indoor sport facility for Trey's baseball tryouts. Josh and Matt are playing too, but are on a t-ball team and will just be assigned a team. This was crazy! You would have thought these kids were trying out for a spot on a college team. Each child had a number and were lined up in a single file line. There were 100 parents on bleachers and the coaches were lined up by home plate and in the outfield in their uniforms sitting in folding chairs and had their notes and even laptops out. They had two sessions of try outs. One group went from 1-3 PM (that was us) and the second went from 3-5 PM. There were 50 kids in Trey's session. Trey was number 33. First they had the kids run from home plate to second base. There was a guy with a megaphone and one with a stop watch. The first guy would say, number 33 Trey Jackson and then Trey would run the bases and then the second guy would say "8.2 seconds" while the coaches scribble the information in their notes. Rich said it was the closest thing to cheer leading tryouts that he had seen and I would agree. Luckily Trey was too young to realize how intimidating or scary this was. They had the kids catch three pop flies, field two balls and hit three pitches all by themselves alone with over 100 people watching. It took two hours for all the kids to try out because with each station every child would take a turn in order and then it would move to the next thing. Trey did well. He was close to catching, but almost no one did catch their balls. He fielded his first ball great and hit all three of his pitches. Almost no body did that. Trey had a good experience and was excited to see which team would select him.


Trey was "drafted" by the Orioles and his coach was Jimmy Dick from Eastern Kentucky. What a guy. He pushed the boys to do their best and taught them the fundamentals of the game. They practiced two to three times a week. Trey learned to listen, give his all, run hard, work as team and enjoy the success the hours of practice brought. At the first practice I didn't know what to think when the coaches told two returning players to "drop and give me twenty" when they threw a ball incorrectly and I laughed when he said the child and parents would have to run a pole if you were late to practice, but soon saw that Jimmy would guide and direct, but never belittle. He wanted to win, but more importantly he wanted the kids to do the very best they were capable of. It was busy, intense and at times stressful but ended being my favorite sport and team my kids have ever played on. Probably because in the end we were like a little family cheering each other on and thrilled with each child's progress. Each game was an adventure and the wins were well deserved.

The Orioles went 14-1 in the regular season with our only loss to the Astros who won the National division regular season. In the tournament we were the undefeated team entering the championship and had to play the defending champion Astros for the title. Sadly, we couldn't pull out the wins (6-3) (9-1) and ended as the Runner-Up, but the boys were proud of all they accomplished. Trey grew by leaps and bounds. He received two game balls; one from the game when we played the #2 Indians and clinched the American title. It was a great moment. He played right field and was the 5th batter by the end of the year. We are so proud of Trey and can't wait to see what the future holds.

GO ORIOLES!

PS This is my favorite of their many chants:

We came down from Oriole Hill; Not to play but just to kill. We don't drink no lemonade, we just drink our Gatorade. We don't play with Barbie dolls, we just play with bats and ball. Sound Off! 1-2 Bring it on down now, 1234, 1-2-3-4! Woo!