Okay, let's talk softball. We had our first game Thursday night, and maybe five minutes into it, I realized things weren't going to go well. Our team has a lot of fellas, so much that we have two different shifts. Halfway through the game, we cycle all of the guys out. On Thursday, I was part of the second shift. To me, this makes sense because there's really no point in revealing your secret weapon in the first inning. Unfortunately, the other team was pretty much full of secret weapons, and they revealed them continuously starting from the first pitch.
The league has a rule where, if one team leads another by 15 runs, the game is stopped. It's called a Mercy Rule. For my long and storied history in team athletics, it may as well be called the Powell Rule. However, usually when the mercy rule gets applied, I'm out on the field, taking an active role in the beat-down. This was not the case Thursday, as we were down by 12 before I even got in there. Since I manage to generate -3 runs for my team per inning, I knew that as soon as I got in, I had to make an impact.
When we changed our guys out, I was the first one up to bat. Both the futility of my teammates and the close proximity of the mercy rule fired me up. I couldn't help but swing at the first pitch. He could've thrown it towards the outfield and I still would've thrown my bat up at it. Luckily, I made contact, but as most would expect, the ball went straight to one of their players. The shortstop threw me out with ease. I hung my head, expecting my failure to only quicken our demise, and then swore revenge on the pitcher.
To my surprise, we did not crumple. No, the Gas House Gang was down, but we were not out. If the Mercy Rule wanted to be applied that night, it'd have to go to some other field, where a slightly better team than our opponents would be playing a slightly worse team than us. We held them scoreless for two long innings. I wish I could say I played a part here, but the ball was never hit to me. I'd like to thinK I was using some primitive power of telepathy to direct me the ball towards my more-skilled team mates. Whatever the case, I got to bat again. This time, I vowed it'd be different.
When I got up that next time, we had a few runners on base. The score was still 12-0, but I knew if I got a hit, we could score a run and at least make this thing almost non-embarrassing. I thought of something else when I got up there: there were two women out in right field just jibber-jabbering away. As the pitcher lobbed one into me, I thought, "No one jibber jabbers while I bat!" With all my might, I tried to belt one out to right field. Unfortunately, I have both no might and no hand-eye coordination. I made contact with the ball, but it went maybe 6 inches from home plate. "Is that fair?" I shouted to the umpire. Before he could respond, I took off running. I have no idea who they had playing catcher, but it must've been someone who, just like me, was completely at home in the novice softball league. My knees a-pumpin', I managed to beat that chump's throw into first; I had a base hit. It didn't leave the infield, let alone the dirt circle around home plate, but I was on.
Once on base, the rally continued. And through my savvy base-running and my refusal to fall down, no matter how stumbly I got, I scored a run, one of 3 we scored that night. Final score: 12-3. And while the the boxscore will never reveal the truly inept nature of my performance that night, it does say 1-2, 1R by my name. Not too shabby.
Posted by Cody at February 20, 2006 8:46 PM