I love the playoffs, but I hate them, too.

Sometimes, it just doesn’t seem fair. One loss — sometimes caused by just one mistake — ends your season. One minute, you’re playing ball out in the sunshine with your friends; the next, you’re headed home to face three months of mowing the lawn.

Softball is the cruelest sport, I think. The games are so close, even during the regular season. One little thing can mean the difference between winning and losing. We saw two games like that in the past two days. Beardstown, a great team, was felled by not one but an uncharacteristic five little things in one inning — including the most routine of routine things: a throw from the catcher back to the pitcher after a pitch. This time, the ball got past the pitcher, allowing a New Berlin runner to advance from second to third. I haven’t seen that all year. And I would bet Beardstown hadn’t seen it all year, either.

Yeah, you gotta give New Berlin credit for putting the ball in play and making Beardstown make plays; That’s part of the game. But Beardstown usually makes those plays. All those plays.

Then on Wednesday, a pitch that was just a little up in the strike zone sailed over the fence to give Nokomis a 1-0 win over Greenfield. Two more inches higher or lower, two more inches inside or outside, and the two teams might still be playing. Again, a good team, and a great pitcher, done in when just one pitch — just one — strayed ever so slightly into that margin of error.

I don’t know what losing like that is supposed to teach anyone. Life isn’t fair?

I think we all knew that already.

I don’t know whose idea it was to split up baseball and softball (and for that matter, volleyball) into four classes, but it just isn’t working for me.

It’s nice that more teams will get a championship; I’m all for that. But these regional assignments look like they were made out by the president of Exxon.

Virginia/A-C Central softball is going to Edinburg; I don’t even know where that is (OK, I could find it on a map — I’m good at that — but I’ve never been there). And this is Virginia, which got the No. 1 seed in its sectional. If I get the No. 1 seed in my sectional, I think I’d deserve to play a little closer to home. Virginia does host a sectional, so maybe it’ll all even out.

How about Triopia? The softball team is headed to Astoria (again, no idea where it is), and the baseball team, seeded No. 2 in its sectional, is headed out to Mount Pulaski. That’s a nice little ride in the country.

I won’t even go into the trek we made to southern Illinois to cover the Greenfield volleyball team in sectionals last fall.

There has to be a better solution than this. What it is, I don’t know. But I can complain, can’t I?

Some seasons, you’ll look at the WIVC champion in baseball or softball and think, yeah, they’re OK, but …

This is not one of those years.

The Routt baseball team is loaded with pitching and hitting. I didn’t see much of Routt early in the season, but the Rockets are really hitting well right now; they’re scoring virtually at will. Devin Vaughn leads the area in hitting with a .650 batting average, and Joe Zeller, probably the hardest-throwing pitcher in the area, is swinging a hot bat. He and Vaughn are tied for the area lead in RBIs with 34. Zeller also has 15 stolen bases on the season.

Routt will meet up with a tough Griggsville team that has beaten the Rockets already once this year (oops! Griggsville beat Routt’s JV team), but I think Routt should make it into the next round. Should be interesting.

No area softball team has been as dominant as the Virginia/A-C Central Redbirds this year. Beardstown is a solid team and should go far in the playoffs. But VAC’s numbers are staggering. Seven of the top nine players in the area in runs batted in play for Virginia/A-C. Brittany Parks still leads the area with a .552 batting average. The Lady Redbirds’ pitching ace, Taylor Jokisch, is well down the list in strikeouts, but her record is 15-0. I think the point of these games is still to win them, isn’t it? Jokisch induces a lot of pop-ups and ground balls, and her defense does the rest. Position by position, it’s one of the best defensive units to come along in awhile. If you hit it to Megan Bergerud at second base, you might as well turn around and walk back to the dugout. Jokisch, by the way, leads the area in ERA, giving up a stingy 1.10 runs per 7 innings.

Virginia/A-C will be playing in the Edinburg Regional, wherever that is, and could face Routt in the second round. The Lady Rockets have been playing better lately, and they’ve got one of the best pitcher-catcher combinations in the area in twin sisters Megan and Amy Lawless. Megan is third in the area in strikeouts with 124 in 90 2/3 innings this season.

My favorites to win regionals for baseball: Carrollton, Routt, Virginia, Triopia; and in Class 2A, Beardstown. For softball, Carrollton, Virginia, Triopia; and in Class 2A, Beardstown. That’s almost identical. Should be a fun week.

We’re all sick here at the Journal-Courier. Tonya’s sick; she didn’t come in tonight. Dee is sick; she’s been out several days with pneumonia. Brian’s sick. I’m getting sick. Matt probably will be sick. Clay was sick, but he’s getting better. Hoot’s sick. Copper was sick, but he’s feeling better, too. I forgot to mention Guido. He’s really sick.

So, we’re all sick.

I went to the Routt vs. North Greene baseball game Wednesday afternoon, and it rained. However, for about the first inning, it didn’t, and I was able to get a few shots, including Devin Vaughn’s home run. But then the rain came, and the video camera had to be put away.

I like our video cameras; they work really well, but I don’t believe they’re intended for professional use (which is fine for me, because I’m still striving for professional status). What I mean to say is the cameras weren’t intended for hard, daily use. They were made for mothers with children to bring out about twice a year for birthday parties and trips to the zoo. I am absolutely amazed that the cameras have held up for as long as they have, considering they’ve been taken out virtually every day since last August to football games, basketball games, and now baseball, softball and track. But, the point is, we have to take good care of them. And you can’t get them wet. The instruction manual says the camera will shut itself off even if it senses too much humidity in the room.

I stayed to watch the game, umbrella in hand. It’s been awhile since I’ve been able to just watch a game. It was a good game; too good, in fact. It had back-to-back home runs, an inside the park homer by Nick Cosgriff with a great head-first slide at the end, and several good plays by both sides. And each successive great play made me wince and grumble, because the camera was back in the car, safe and dry.

So, that’s why the highlights are a bit skimpy this time.

I was at a softball game the other day, and the home plate umpire did something unusual. Before the game, he asked both teams to drag all their equipment out of the dugouts and line it up against the fence — bats, batting helmets, catcher’s masks, etc. He then proceeded to pick up each item, look it over and then put it back down.

In itself, probably not a bad idea. Sometimes a bat or a helmet that isn’t quite up to standards can find its way into the equipment bag (just ask Sammy Sosa). And I’m sure coaches check the equipment all the time, but it’s a nice idea for someone to check the stuff out right before a game to make sure a helmet isn’t cracked or a faceguard on a catcher’s mask isn’t loose. It’s kind of like checking your headlights and taillights before you pull out of the driveway — although I don’t know of anyone who does that. So, it seemed like kind of a good common-sense thing to do, even if it was a little annoying and puzzling to some of the fans watching.

Anyway, the game starts and this home plate umpire yells out to his partner that he forgot his balls-and-strikes indicator. It was still out in his car.

Just one of those funny little things.

I don’t know if much has been made of this in the newspaper (if it’s been mentioned, I must’ve missed it). Longtime Journal-Courier photographer Steve Warmowski’s last day at the paper was Wednesday.

Of all the people at the newspaper, I think Steve was the most widely known. Anytime we’re out in the community and we tell people we work for the Journal-Courier, they always ask us about “that photographer.” That’s Steve. You’ll probably be at a game someday and you’ll wonder what’s missing — until you realize it’s the guy in the orange coat and the weird blue hat.

There are few people who can be described as the heart and soul of a place, but Steve was that type of person. He had an energy and an enthusiasm for newspapering that was infectious and hopefully even contagious. I met him at my little interview lunch before I was hired some eight years ago (before they hire you here, they take you out to eat). I knew right away that this was where I wanted to work. I could tell these people genuinely cared about what they were doing (and they still do). You can’t say that about all newspapers, believe me.

Steve is a great shooter, but his technical skill as a photographer was overshadowed by his love for telling stories about people. I never thought he would quit the business. Not in a million years.

Steve took most of our sports photographs. He got all the big plays, but he was always looking for the small moments within a game. He turned in lots of photos of players helping opponents to their feet after they had fallen on the field of play — the types of moments that reveal the character of the young people we cover. I think those were his favorite pictures.

Steve was always willing to go the extra mile — literally. I remember waking up at 4 a.m. or something crazy like that so we could get over to Indiana to see the MacMurray football team play Wabash College. Steve wanted to take a nap on the way, so he made me drive his car when we got out on the highway, even though I had never driven a stick. Somehow, we made it. We’ve been trying to save some money here at the paper, so I rode with Steve to lots of events in the past several months. He did all the driving.

So where’s he gone? Steve is going to concentrate on taking wedding photographs with his wife, Tiffany. He’ll be doing some freelance work as well. Steve and Tiffany have been shooting weddings on weekends for about the past year now, and the double duty finally became too much to handle.

The Journal-Courier will get along without Steve, of course, as it would get along without any of us. After all, they’ve been putting out the paper since 1830. But it’s going to be a different place without him here. Steve made a difference.

I miss the orange coat already.

In this job, there are plenty of days that I wish I could be in two places at once. Today, I wish I could be in more than two places at once.

There are a ton of big events today. Big. For starters, you’ve got the Beardstown Tiger Relays and the Greene County Meet. Then there’s Quincy at Jacksonville baseball. Routt at Virginia/A-C Central baseball. Pittsfield at Beardstown baseball. And then there’s softball. Pittsfield at Rushville-Industry. And a game I am dying to see — Beardstown at Triopia-Meredosia, which features two of the area’s premiere pitchers, two of the better hitting lineups, and two legendary coaches.

We’re figuring on covering Pittsfield at Beardstown baseball — two solid teams, two rivals, and two teams we haven’t seen much this spring. But what a tough decision. Jacksonville baseball is starting to come around; Virginia/A-C Central wants a little revenge against Routt. Carrollton’s Tyler Lippert is tearing it up in the discus. I’ve never seen Beardstown’s Penny Grant run. And that softball game at Triopia.

Well … it’ll probably rain.

Mike Rigoni is a good basketball coach. So we were surprised Thursday when we found out his teaching position at Routt had been cut, and he would no longer be coaching there. Routt offered to let him stay on as coach, but without the teaching job, obviously it wouldn’t have worked for him.

Over the past several years, the same thing has happened at several area schools, and I’m thinking particularly about Carrollton. Budget cuts force the board to reduce staff, and sometimes, the staff member is also a coach. It’s not a good situation for the coach, the school or the players. Budget cuts are never good.

Routt had a ton of talent this year and should have gone further in the playoffs, but a couple of things happened during the season that kept the team from being everything it might have been and doing everything it might have done. There really wasn’t much Rigoni could have done to prevent either one of them.

We don’t know everything that goes on behind the scenes — sometimes, that’s for the best — but I don’t think another coach could have gotten more out of that team than Rigoni did. Through it all, Routt still won a share of the WIVC championship in 2007-08. That was no small accomplishment this season, with teams like co-champ A-C Central/Virginia, Carrollton and West Central to contend with.

Over the past three years it was interesting to see Routt progress as a team and to see Rigoni progress as a coach. Routt was his first head coaching job. The Rockets lost some big leads this year, which made some people a little crazy, but they almost always came out on the winning end. For some reason, people forget that.

Routt won a lot of games this year. The team went 22-7, and Routt was always fun to watch. No area team ran the fast break better than Routt did. And no coach was any more gracious after a win or a loss than Rigoni. No matter what happened, he was always willing to talk to us, and he was always willing to have the interview videotaped. No matter what. He took some shots from some of the posters on our Web site — some fair, some unfair — but he never once complained about that, either. I think he understood that criticism comes with the job. That’s kind of a rare thing in itself, especially for someone who hasn’t been a head coach for that long.

But Rigoni was kind of a rare coach in a lot of ways.

Best of luck, coach.

This past week I’ve heard not one but two people suggest that we sponsor an “honor roll” track meet for area teams. The State Journal-Register’s meet is nice, they say, but it would be nicer to have one just for the smaller schools that we cover.

I’ve thought about it for years. I think it’s a terrific idea. When I first got to the Journal-Courier, I started an honor roll for track, as well as for wrestling. I interned at the News-Gazette in Champaign many years ago, and that newspaper had honor rolls like that. Great idea. I think the News-Gazette sponsors a track honor roll meet, where the athletes with the best times and heights and distances are invited to compete. The wrestling honor roll, well, that’s just to give the wrestlers some recognition (and they really don’t get enough).

Our track honor roll was for recognition only. I figured, if enough people were interested enough in track to send in all their results, eventually we’d pursue sponsoring a meet.

They weren’t, so we didn’t.

The Varsity site would make keeping track of the best times and heights and distances in the area as easy as scratching in the triple jump. The site is set up so coaches can enter their own stats, if for some reason we don’t receive them.

Maybe we will sponsor that meet someday. But we’re going to need a little help.