Rusty
That softball tourney GTB wanted me to play in was yesterday and it went better than I anticipated.
GTB begged and pleaded and finally wore me down enough that I agreed to play, and then we had a catch and I saw that I do still have the skillz. The arm still zips and I can still catch in the sweet spot of my mitt. So I went into yesterday perhaps a little cocky about how well I’d do.
I sat out the first part of the first game, but got to bat. In the fourth inning, I went in at second. It felt familiar, and good. I remembered how to read where a hitter would send the ball by how they position their feet in the box.
Over the course of the day, we played four games: three round robin games and a “championship” game. We won all three of our round robin games and then lost in the championship to a team we’d previously kicked the snot out of. What can I say? We’re old and we were tired by then.
GTB played, too, and he’s pretty good. His bat got hot for a while (meow!) and he knows his way around the outfield. It was fun to watch him.
At the end of the day, I was a little disappointed in my play. My hitting was off and on, and, like in high school, I found I hit better when I was relaxed and having fun and not so worried about jacking it out of the park. I made a couple of clean plays at second and a few at first (which I only played for half a game), but I was a terrible cut off for the right fielder and I forgot my place a couple of times. When the ball goes to the pitcher, is it me or the short stop who covers second? I couldn’t remember and in the confusion, I cost us an easy play.
That kinda shit makes me grumpy and when GTB came to console me, he learned what a bitch I am when I’m not playing well. (Mom, I maybe should have asked you to give him a lesson in this.) Going to sleep last night, all I could remember were the missed plays and dumb little dribblers I hit back to the pitcher.
But when I woke up this morning, I thought back to the last time I played softball and realized it was in the summer of 1998. I lived in New York then and some of the guys I worked with would go out at lunchtime to a field in the middle of Manhattan to play. I was the only girl who went with them, and I was pretty good then, but that was ELEVEN YEARS AGO. And other than that catch with GTB, I haven’t played at all. It’s been over a decade since I fielded a ball or swung a bat.
There were some girls on our team yesterday who played college softball at Notre Dame, and comparing myself to them would never be fair. But for not even practicing before hitting the field, I held my own pretty well.
So I’ve decided to focus on that awesome little blooper I hit over the infield and the time we almost turned two but I held it to be safe, which may have saved a run.
Not that I’ll be signing up for any rec leagues anytime soon, but it’s more fun to think of myself as a rusty has been rather than a middlin’ never was.