Some slept in, most of course the pool or Jacuzzi. Egle and Rapalas were taken up in the host’s private plane for a scenic tour, flew south for a ways and then back north at 500 feet above the ocean, over the Queen Mary in Long Beach, truthfully very jealous of this adventure, but not convinced that I would have been as comfortable as the host ad seemed to be when Rapalas was flying and had the controls of the plane. As they are landing back at John Wayne airport, a 737 is landing next to them on the adjacent runway.
At the LRLL fields at 11:30 a.m. for workout prior to the 1:00 PM game. After yesterday’s great showing, hoping they all truly do well as this is their last game with us. Warm-ups seem to go OK, not that many deep squats going on, so assume all is OK.
They played the Dodgers who are managed by Chad Lapes, the gentleman that helped VN with pants etc. One of the coaches is Brain Shackleford-also known as Shack-Daddy, Brian’s wife Rochelle, Mamma-Shack was my go to person for this weeks host families and she made sure that my train left the station on time.
Introductions by the announcer, each Lit given a red-white-blue and a red-green-yellow sweat band that the league had custom made, both teams wearing them, looked awesome. Four man umpire crew, water in the dugout, of course not ice cold. VN was also given three sets of LRLL all-star uniforms, truly look magnificent and know they will be worn with pride when they play at home.
All though they did not play at the level they did yesterday, they played well and held their own. Justinas Sabalys starts the game and throw 34 pitches, Edis Matusevicius in relief 10 pitches, Rapalas Petronis 41 pitches and game finished by Gerdas Palciukas with 2 pitches. Vykintas Kaziulis has a double and played brilliant shortstop, kid was a vacuum today. Kestas Vilimas played catcher today and had two throw outs on kids stealing second base, one of which was on a ball four, but no matter, the kid has a gun for an arm and got the runner out by three steps. Lits lose 9-2, but as said held their own.
Post game, Lits say good-bye to the NMV families that came out to watch the last day, hugs all around, what great folks that adopted each and every Lit. At 5:00 pm a pool party, BBQ with of course cheeseburgers and tons of other goodies. All the LRLL host families there with all their own plus the Lit kids, still amazes me how in such a short time, every one knows everyone.
Egle’s host Dad found a Russian deli, and purchased what the owner promised was also Lithuanian food for the extravaganza, Lithuanian bread, pickled herring, the garlic/artichoke spread on Lithuanian rye bread, delicious.
All back to their homes at 7:00 pm for the painful chore of packing. We are all meeting in the parking lot of the drop-off point so that VN can re-pack them all and assign them the extra bags that they are to claim to be their own when we check-in at Lufthansa. Plan is to have both 15 passenger vans, two pickup trucks and a large SUV fully loaded to get to the airport. Getting there is not going to be the big problem, it is getting it all on the plane that I fear will be a nightmare.
