Alternate Title:
There’s No Crying In Slow Pitch
So I’ve been holding onto this story for a while. I need to get back into the mood for softball after a bye week, so here goes.
As most stories with me begin I was drinking….a lot. That’s my general pre-game routine for softball. Mostly I try to stay around 4-5 16oz. degrading curls of Bud Light about an hour before game time. This puts me into the right mindset of talk a lot of junk and have a great time guy.
On the evening in question, the game was tied at the bottom of the third inning with two outs. Now sometimes during the game, when I’m playing catcher, I like to setup outside and then move inside mid-pitch…you know, to throw off the batters. Well it just so happened during my move, the guy pops it up. That’s when I spring my drunk ass into action and deliver a web gem to end the inning. In my head the crowd was cheering…or maybe my ears were just ringing. So I caught a foul ball that was about 3/4ths of the way down the 3rd base line to end the inning.
So here is where the real story begins. One of the things I love about baseball/softball is the momentum that is gained when a player makes a nice defensive play and then comes back to lead off the inning. Well I was up to bat with the score tied 4 all. I dug into the batter’s box ready to unleash some sort of herculean feat upon the other team. The first pitch was inside; “He’s trying to brush me back.”, I thought. *remember folks…I’m drunk* I take the next pitch for a ball. The count was 3 and 1 and I was looking for my pitch and then, *wham*, I hit a rope down the third base line that the 3rd baseman fields cleanly.
Now this part of the story is a bit hazy for me as I don’t remember it. From what Dibs tells me I was moving quite quickly towards first base, but at some point I lose my footing. The next thing I remember is I’m tumbling down first base in foul territory. Lying prostrate on the ground, I hear “blue” call me safe and this is where my memory kicks back in… I see the ball banging around in front of the home team’s dugout and immediately my mind turns to taking 2nd base. As fast as I can muster, I scrambled to my feet with only the thought of taking a base on the errant throw to first.
Noooooo!!!!!!
“Who is that?” I thought and “Who are they talking to?” “Wait, is that my whole team and most of our fans telling me to stop and go back?” “Screw ‘em”, I thought, “I’m taking 2nd.” So there I was, barreling towards that poor little second baseman with my whole team, all of our friends and family and possibly my girlfriend (she still doesn’t look me in the eye when I ask if she was for or against my endeavor) telling me to stop. The only thought in my head was to take 2nd base, “BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY”. Now I’m not going to say I slid in with my cleats up, but allz I know is that the second baseman was nowhere to be seen when I went for my slide. I was safe…and everyone was ROLLING in the bleachers laughing their collective butts off at what they just witnessed! Looking down I noticed that my knee was bleeding and my ribs were aching; but I was safe, on second, with no outs. Life was good.
Two batters later I scored on a sacrifice fly. We didn’t let the other team score another run and went on to win 7 – 4. I’d like to think the sacrifice of my body and effort I put into my at bat led us to victory. I was a gamer, I lit the spark, I *insert dramatic pause here* was the CATALYST…
Or maybe I was just a drunk guy who takes slow pitch softball just a little bit too seriously.
Peafe Nation
