Play ball! Oh, ouch

Reading Tom Salemi's post about softball teams, I was reminded of my old team.


Well, it wasn't mine, I was just on it.


We were in a league.


We were awful.


I think we only won one game, and that was by forfeit. We celebrated as if we'd won a gold medal in the Olympics. What am I saying? We celebrated our losses as if we'd won a gold medal. We even celebrated when one of us broke her leg during a game (she was a real sport; as they carried her to the ambulance, she called to us to come over to her house in a couple of hours).


I remember one time, a friend of mine coming to watch our game. I think he mostly came to scope out the chicks. Anyway, we were practicing before our game and I was in the outfield, shagging fly balls.


He told me afterwards that he looked away for a few seconds (What did I say about scoping out chicks?) and when he looked back, I was lying on my back in the outfield, a softball lying in the grass not far from my gloved hand. I think he was exaggerating; I don't remember going down to the ground.


That was the first time I was hit in the head area by a fly ball. The second time I was swiftly driven to the hospital to make sure my nose wasn't broken because it was bleeding profusely.


We never took it seriously, so thank God our sponsor wasn't the "must-win-at-all-costs" type.


For example, we in the outfield would get very irate in practice when a ground ball would get through the infield. Sometimes it would knock over one of our bottles of beer. I can still hear the coach yelling, "Forget the beer! Get the ball!"


Our coaches were always a teammate's husband, or brother, or some other poor schnook who probably thought beer would make us better.


Nevertheless, I played softball from the time I was a little girl (I had my own glove and my own bat) to the time I moved away from Flint (to Pontiac, before we moved here). And even then, I reluctantly handed over my bats (had two by then - a wooden one and an aluminum one) to my friend's son.


Could never part with my glove, although I have no idea where it is at this moment.