Since so many people are at the edge of their seats waiting for scrub league softball wrap-ups. here is the beginning of a log of my two team's summer 2008seasons.
I am playing Tuesday nights in Westerville with Westerville Wahoos. I didn't name the team so I am not going to count this against my new effort to ban the Chief Wahoo symbol in my life out of respect to Native Americans around the country. Therefore, I will try to refer to this team as the "Westerville" team instead of the Wahoos. This team consists of some good friends of mine from past teams and past experiences as well as current situations.
I also am playing on Wednesday nights in Hilliard where I have been playing for almost a decade now with Horizon. These guys are friends from softball teams of WAY back. The cool thing about this league besides the guys I play with is the fact that I will have a nice rivalry with a team that consists of most of my Westerville teammates from Tuesdays. That is going to be interesting.
Before I start let me mention a couple of things.
First, THANK GOD I am not managing. Nothing against the leagues or people, I just hate signing the team up, gathering money, fronting the money, dealing with rules and schedules, representing the team on questionable calls when guys blow up, feeling bad about who I put at particular field positions or batting order slots and so on. Playing with the lineup is fun but I can do that on my own for kicks and giggles. Keeping stats is fun but it is not worth people knit picking you over them when you don't really care all that much in the first place out side of having talking points to discuss and analyzing trends or whatever. It is so much more enjoyable for me to just show up with my stuff, play where the captain tells me to play and hit where the captain tells me to hit. Then I can do my thing, talk my stuff and have stress free fun.
Secondly, Westerville is very clean, nice and professional.
Third, Norman is a master pitcher. He puts the ball where he wants it. He is unafraid of throwing balls or walking batters. A 3-1 count is nothing to him. He just throws inside to outside, long to short, high to low, straight or with spin. I love watching it. It is a thing of beauty when he has his stuff working. Seriously. This is only softball but dude......
So here we go:
WEEK ONE
Tonight was Opening night and the weather was good sans the sun in my eyes for the first 5 innnings. Fortunately nothing was hit towards me. I was nervous. I am playing 2B and I have not played well in the infield the past couple years and worry I lost whatever little skill I had. I pray that some reps there will help improve my play.
Most importantly, we came out as a team and won in convincing fashion 13-4. I am not sure this team is a good representation of the competition we will face in Westerville but we handled things well tonight. You can never base your projection on the first team you play. And I am NOT saying we are a better team or anything. We just were tonight...on the scoreboard.
It was good to see the team interact well and look comfortable in their positions. Baddeley has catcher on lock down. Our outfield hustled and caught what was hit to them. The infield made plays. We didn't throw the ball all over the place. And that's not to say we won't in the future. Just not tonight.
Me? I sucked. I never got into a rhythm at the plate. I swung at bad first pitches. Rule #1 in my book of hitting: NEVER swing at the first pitch. There are obvious times to swing but you need to go into it thinking never to avoid what I did tonight. I went 0-2 or 0-3 with a BB and RBI. Each out was a weak ground ball in the infield. It was bad. I was fortunate to have a guy at third to get the RBI. Really it was weak. I was thinking way too much at the plate. I tried to just go hit and ended up swinging at two first pitch balls.
Hopefully with a game under my belt I will be better at the plate next week. But really it matter little...we won. I am happy because that is the point. I would just feel a little bit better if I contributed to the win more than two put outs at second.
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