Softball
 

Have joined a city league softball team. I don't know anyone on the team--it's a neighborhood thing. I knew we were signed up for the very lowest level.

So I had some trepidation in showing up, given my inexperience playing. I played intramural softball once, and it was not organized well, and I did not play well either (especially batting).

I was especially worried that I might embarrass myself batting. We took to the field and each person took a turn batting while the rest of us fielded. I was one of the last to bat. I had bought some batting gloves, and I wondering if I should be a total d-bag and put them on or whether just get up there and bat bare-handed. Screw 'em. I'm going to wear my gloves, I don't care if I look like a pretentious d-bag with no skills.

I guess I have gotten stronger with age, because I was beating the hell out of the ball compared to the other guys. Middle-aged suburban guys--soft in the middle, most of them. I'm a pretty active guy. But I was surprised. After about 20 swings at the plate, I noticed I was breathing pretty heavy. I'm not a Will Clark smooth-swing type. I'm a samurai maximum-effort chopper, so I guess it was kind of like the effort of swinging an axe 20 times as hard as you can.

We had one guy on our team, that struggled to hit the ball past the pitcher. He was so weak, he might as well have been swinging a wet noodle.

Anyway, it's fun, and its reminding me of my little league days. I'm relearning my lost love of the great American pastime. I think. And yes, I'll be wearing my d-bag batting gloves!

Softball season is over now.

It turns out that the above post was very optimistic about my batting ability. I really struggled at the plate. Hitting the ball off the end of the bat, weak infield popups, and other garbage. But about 3 weeks ago I turned it around and started finally smacking the ball. I started focusing on really watching the ball all the way (I know, they tell you that from the age of 8). Had a 100% on-base in the last two games, and ended the season batting 3rd.

The team was terrible. We lost every game. The killer part is that we had about 4 at-bats last night, where if we had gotten an RBI hit, we would have had a walk-off win.

My fielding was a bit suspect in the outfield, but got better as the season went along. I only had one really bad miss (first game). And a kinda bad miss (last game). The last one was a misjudged liner that went over me as I was running to my right (left-field line). But it is cool when you make a good catch in the outfield, and people/teammates cheer. My throwing accuracy is terrible. That is what I need to really work on.

I hope I get to play again. And I would suggest that any of you who get the chance, go for it.

Now on my 3rd season of softball (they pretty much have seasons year round). First game. And we finally won our first game ever. :)

I tell you, it's a lot of fun. I'm not all that good, but I'm getting better. If you get a chance to join a league, do it.

Just go to the batting cages if you want to hit better. It's fielding that's hard to learn again. I couldn't judge a fly for the life of me when I played on the work team (and I played LL and JV).

Went to the batting cages and it screwed me up. The softballs are thrown much faster than in the games.

I'm getting better in the outfield. But I still find it very hard, for whatever reason, judging distance. The outfielders who are even worse than me have the same problem. Our center fielder is awesome, played high school varsity baseball, could have played small college baseball if he wanted to.

Anyway, it's tough when you don't get to practice. The games are the practice. Would be helpful if I could shag more flies in a practice.

About 5 years ago I had the opportunity to play on our ward softball team in a local church league. Now, when I was a kid I was reallly terrible at baseball and softball and anything that involved hitting a ball with a bat but I figured being older and more coordinated I would be ok in slow pitch softball. Nope. It seemed that anytime that I got on base it was because someone made a mistake or a force out or something like that.

I tried the batting cages while preparing for these games but they always seemed screwed up because I'm so much taller than the average batter and the contraption wouldn't allow adjustments to that extent.

Ah well, nothing ventured nothing gained I guess.

I think that I'll just stick to basketball.

Just popped onto your blog. Sorry about the passing of your father. I met him that one time. Sounds like a lived a very good life.

Thanks. I appreciate that.

Came up to bat last night with two on base, last inning. 1 out. Up by one run that just scored. Hit an inside-the-park homer (over-the-fence homer in our league is an ejection). If the ball gets to the fence, it's gonna be a homer for me.

So I have 3 homers (one hit the fence in the air) in 19 games. I extrapolated that to a MLB season of 162 games, and that is 25.6 homers per season.

In the non-steroid era, that's not too bad!!! :)

4 homers in 26 games. Plus we just won our league championship. No wins in our first two seasons, champions of our third season. Beat the two top seeds in the playoffs. In the final, we beat the top seed, who had beat us previously by one run two different times.

It's kinda funny--our best outfielder plays right field. Late addition to our team. Our center fielder is great. Our left fielder is very good. I'm the relatively weak link in right-center. But our right fielder played center field in college. He made this diving catch of a short fly in the bottom of the inning of our first playoff game that literally saved us. Amazing play. We were laughing that the best outfielder in the league, on our team, plays right field.