Athletic mind

"It's not how good you are, it's how bad you want it"

Softball Splurb

The bench was barely wide enough for all of us to fit, with bazooka gum stuck to the edges and splinters sticking out of the corners. Well, what used to be corners, they were pretty rounded off. Right dab in the middle was a rather large crack, roughly the size of a pee wee baseball bat. When you were bored you could pull it up and let it go to listen for the loud smack it made when it plunged back to where it cozily fit in. It looked like Babe Ruth had once sat on the damn thing. The fence in front of our faces had been duck taped endlessly, We could barley see through the slots. They started off the size of a baseball, and somehow were now smaller than a golf ball. We all complained about the stupid fence; said take it down, we had helmets right? Oh boy were we glad that creaky old fence was there when foul balls came plummeting in our direction. Everywhere you walked inside that dugout you were stomping on sun flower seeds. And an occasional wad of gum got stuck to the bottom of your cleats and you didn't notice until you took a step and left your shoe behind. There were always those girls who were on deck but were too busy fixing their pony tails and making sure their shorts didn't go below there knees or leave a camel toe. You'd yell their names a few times and the umpire would warn you that you've got 15 seconds to get her to home plate or it was an automatic out. Coach says they're high maintenance. If you ask me they were just plain old dumb broads. You'd have the parents who'd bring their video camera's but knew their daughter sucked and made up some lame excuse as to why they weren't actually filming when she'd come running to the fence and say “did you get that?”. Like Mary Lou's mom; after hitting a line drive to the second basemen, instead of running to first she ran to the pitcher's mound. When she asked her mom if she got her dive on tape she said “Oh no hunny, your father forgot to give me the batteries.” The next game when Mary Lou could have made the best double play ever she wanted to show off her ballet skills and did some kind of Nomar twist, jump, kick, and I don't even know what the rest of it was, but by the time she came back down there were no runners on base. Her mom said “I thought I got it, but I guess I never actually hit 'record'”. And then there was Jennifer Lee, oh she cracked me up. Our first day at try-outs she asked me which hand the glove went on, I looked at it, thought I could have fun with it and told her to put it on her right hand. She missed the first drill because she couldn't seem to fit her thumb in the pinky hole. After that I finally told her it was the other hand and convinced her she'd heard me wrong. The second drill; we were all in the out field and Coach Barrett was hitting pop flies. Jennifer was right under the ball, Coach yelled out “Turn your glove!” and she did; right upside down.

We were all two months and three days away from becoming freshman. It was the first scrimmage of the summer league; our first day of being the laughing stock of the girl's softball league. Coach had taken one last swig of that funky concoction he had going on in that Gatorade bottle of his. Rather odd in my opinion; smelled like my uncle's breath when he went around kicking the cat, “God rest his soul” (the cat's), as my mother would say. Any who, after sticking his bottle in between the chain links he'd run out to the third base line, never looking at the opposing team's coach, (probably in shame of the constant humiliation) and wait to give us the signals. Did anyone use those signals? No. Most of the time Coach would put some out there and some stooge would step out of the box and stare at him with their eyes squinted then make their way over to him and he just told them. Did they do it then? No. It was always jerk around real fast, give Coach that pucker fish face and say “Whoops, I forgot”.