It’s official: I’ve got baseball/softball on the brain.
I know I’ve talked about before how I don’t consider myself a sports fanatic — and I still don’t. I mean, I don’t plan my schedule around games and stuff, but if I’m home, I’ll certainly watch.
This is the best time of year because it’s conference championships and then the College World Series for both baseball and softball. And just in time, I’m getting my new digital sports tier package. Yaaayyyyy.
So in honor of that, and also because of Hannah’s post today about Jesse’s first baseball game ever (which makes me all nostalgic for my playing days), here we go:
THINGS I LEARNED PLAYING SOFTBALL
1. When you’re playing third base during your first day of Regional All-Star practice and you hear the crack of the ball against the bat and someone yells “heads up!” just assume they’re talking to you and throw yourself to the ground without worrying how ridiculous you might look, because you’re inevitably going to catch that linedrive in your throat. Every. Time. Trust me. It hurts. Like hell.
2. When your boyfriend and your best guy friend hang out after their game just to see you play, and they’re sitting on a car behind the center field fence, and you’re super proud that you just 1) hit a homerun over said center field fence and 2) that your boyfriend and your best guy friend, veritable baseball studs that they are, saw you hit that homerun, don’t then trip over your feet and do a face-plant as you head out to play center field. Because that…just doesn’t look remotely sexy.
3. Even though it’s totally embarrassing that your mom — who coached you for two years — gets thrown out of your game after yelling at the umpire, it’s still a little bit cool — a fact you would never dream of admitting to anyone.
4. When your friend plays on the other team, all bets are off, and she is, in fact, going to ram right into you while you’re trying to protect first base — and she is, in fact, going to dislocate the pinky finger on your glove hand. And two days later, your mom is, in fact, going to still make you pitch because, as she points out, it wasn’t your pitching hand. And so you wedge your glove over your cast and proceed to pitch a one-hitter.
5. Learning how to run the bases so your knee just happens to maybe smack into the glove of the person retrieving the ball, therefore causing the ball to pop out of said glove and allowing you to get to base safely is apparently not cheating: it’s gamesmanship.
6. It may be fun — and look very Derek Jeter Sports Center highlight reel-ish — to throw yourself sideways in your pursuit of a ball hit to you at shortstop, but every muscle you never knew you had is going to ache the next day, and somehow it doesn’t matter anymore that you stopped the tying run from scoring and thereby won the game.
7. When the count is 3-0, you always take that next pitch. You just always do. Always take the next pitch.
8. When the count is 0-2, never stand there and let the next pitch go by. At least strike out while…doing something. It looks way less lame.
9. Never, ever confuse your coach’s constant scratching and/or frequent adjustment of something you’d rather not think about during the middle of a particuarly exciting inning with your coach’s signal to steal third.
10. Never, ever, ever throw the bat in the general direction of your mother when she tells you to stop sulking after you struck out. It will never bode well for you.
And some much more practical guidelines, including that pesky infield fly rule for Hannah:
1. Dropped strike: If the catcher drops the ball on strike three, the batter can still run to first.
2. Tagging up: If there’s no outs or one out and a pop fly is hit, the runner must touch the base again to see whether or not the ball will be caught before taking off for the next base.
3. Infield fly: This rule was devised because too many infielders were dropping a pop fly on purpose so that they could turn the double play. Basically, if there is a runner on the base, and a pop-up occurs in the infield, the batter is automatically out.
4. Balk: Once a pitcher has started his/her wind-up, he/she cannot stop in the middle and start again. That is called balking, and the batter is immediately awarded first base.
5. Bunting: Whereby the batter slides his dominant hand up the barrel of the bat and swings out toward the pitcher as the ball is pitched and taps the ball hard enough so that it is fair but soft enough so that it drops in too close enough so that the infielders have to scramble. It’s usually a sacrifice, as the batter is almost always thrown out at first, but the purpose is served: the other base-runners are advanced. However, in softball often times coaches will lead off with their fastest players…if a player is fast and bunts well, most times she’ll beat out the throw to first. Advance the runners at all costs is usually the strategy.
I played softball for five-ish years. I was supposed to try out for a travel team but I’d gotten to high school and gotten into journalism, and so I opted to quit both it and soccer. Sometimes I miss it.
I did coach 7th and 8th grade girls’ softball at the private school where I used to sub, and that was a lot of fun. Except the girls used to fight over who got to ride to and from practice and games in my car.
