Michael Sullivan Online

MERIMBULA AUSTRALIA - 19 December 2000 - This week Mike got some practice driving in order to get ready for his holiday. He went shoppintg and/or running errands nearly every day. He feels pretty comfortable now. More importantly, Friday was Trivia Night. It was organized by the baseball team and was an absolute blast. There were different little "games" in between the trivia such as sliding a coin across the floor towards a bottle of bourbon and the closest one to it wins. Another game that actually paid out for Mike was called heads or tails. Basically everyone chooses heads or tails by putting their hands on their head or backside. A coin is tossed and people that chose correctly stay in and the others are eliminated. Mike won a pair of batting gloves and a small esky (a cooler). In addition, his trivia team, appropriately called "We're the Best" just beat out "Killers" to win first place.

Saturday was a bit different since there were no junior games for Mike to coach because of the holidays. Mike spent most of the day being lazy. Later in the afternoon, Mike went to see the movie "Snatch". It has Brad Pitt and Guy Ritchie (Madonna's new soon to be husband) directed it. It was a good movie but the plot was a bit hard to follow.

Sunday was triple header day for Mike. The B grade game went pretty well. Mike went 3 for 4 with a walk. He started in left field and caught two innings. The opposition wasn't the strongest. The A grade had a double header that Mike helped out with. In the first game, he coached first base and warmed up the pitcher in between innings while the catcher got his gear on. In one inning, Mike took a ball in the dirt right off the ankle. It didn't bruise but it was quite swollen. That was just the beginning of the ball making unwanted contact with Mike. Because it was so hot and the opponent wasn't that great, Mike started in the second game as catcher. In his first two at bats, Mike got hit by the pitcher. The first time the ball glanced off his upper arm as Mike tried to turn away. The second time, it just caught Mike's stomache. Other than that, Mike was 0 for 3 but caught a pretty good game. He arrived at the field at 8:30am and left at about 6:30pm. Mike still had some fuel in the tank (not much though) and went to see Charlie's Angels at night. It was a VERY cheesey movie but was fun to watch never the less.

Here ends Mike's thirty third week in Australia.