Feeling the heat

Yesterday was a hot day. The sun was beating down, the breeze was gentle at best, and it was just plain hot.
High school baseball has the fortune of wrapping its season up before players have to drip buckets of sweat each game. This spring they were only ringing rain out their hats, and tons of it. But for Legion players, it's a different story.
I attended the Shelby-Moultrie Jr. Legion game Sunday and saw the local team get beat up 20-3 by a strong Decature team. The crowd was groaning in the stands as we watched the Decatur team run all over the hometown team, and all we had to do was sit in the stands.
It may be a while before Shelby-Moultrie team gels together in the field and on the mound. They proved they could hit with 36 runs in their first two games, but it appeared on Sunday that, after they used six pitchers, fans and coaches may require a little patience.
Decatur's team was a well-oiled machine, as all the players showed great hustle and a team cohesiveness, while Shelby-Moultrie players often looked sluggish. These are things that may take a while, as several of Shelby-Moultrie's players aren't used to playing nine innings or dogging it in the summer heat, and this is only the first year of the program, so you can't expect cohesiveness.
Regardless, the fans remained upbeat, cheering every time a player even made contact or a pitcher threw a strike.