A Tale of an Ex-Softball Player

If you didn't know it, I once upon a time used to be a softball player. I played on my first team when I was 8, and played every season after that until I graduated high school. If you count the separate seasons between school ball and summer league (competitive), I played about 16 different seasons. I was a pitcher and an outfielder until I hit my junior year in high school. We got a new coach, and the coach put my long legs to use on first. I wasn't terrible, but I wasn't the greatest either. I got a little bit of recognition my senior year when I was selected for all-conference, all-district (7), all-region, and all-state alternate. My batting average kept me from all-state because I was TERRIBLE at batting and I didn't bat very often. I also got a little bit of recognition when I had 3-4 junior colleges interested in me coming to play post-high school.

I don't tell you all this to brag, I just tell you this to explain my history. In the summer, I mostly played with the same girls that were on the school team. We were the Sperry Thunder, and our colors were purple and yellow. We would win some, we'd lose some, we'd win tournaments, we'd get our 5 games and then lose out of tournaments. Some weeks, we were really on. Some weeks, we were really off. And it seemed that no matter who we played, there was always one inning that we sucked ass. (I can say that on here, it's my blog.)

It might have been my freshman year, I'm not exactly sure, but we were playing with our summer league team. We only had 2 pitchers on the team (me being one of them), and the other pitcher got a knee injury during a game. I had to pitch a lot while she was recovering. It was around this time that I started to HATE softball. My shoulder always hurt, and icy hot no longer worked for me. We switched to biofreeze, and it would be okay during the first couple of innings then would wear off. SO, one of the coaches of our team went to Atwoods and picked up some horse liniment. Yes you read that right. I used this stuff before every single game:

WHO DOES THAT?! But it was the only thing that loosened up my shoulder muscles enough for long enough that it didn't hurt too bad after play.
Along with the liniment, I was also popping 6-8 ibuprofen or tylenol to keep it from hurting. I'm surprised I still have a stomach or liver.

Since I've been in college, I decided that I didn't hate softball as much as I thought I did, I just was tired of it at the time. Freshman year, I played on a co-ed team, and I got to play first base. The boys were amazed at how I wasn't scared of their hard and fast throws from across the diamond. I just wanted to make sure we got the out. Since then, I've played with that team a couple more times, and one of the guys told me he keeps my phone number just in case he ever needs a first baseman.

Sophomore year, I joined a sorority, so I played on their slow pitch team. For some reason we didn't have a team my junior year, and last year we were unable to play because the tournament was during initiation week. This year, we ran into the same problem with divisional softball. This is where we play against other sororities on campus. Our first game was at 5 on Thursday, with the second game either being at 9 or 10. We had an initiation ceremony at 10. I unfortunately had to take us out of the divisional tournament.

Sunday I got a text from one of my girls asking if she could play on a separate co-ed softball team. I couldn't find my house partners for the co-ed tournament, so she was free to play with them. I then asked if they needed anymore girls because I would like to play if they did.

We had our first two games last night. I only knew the girl from my house, and she knew 3 or 4 of the guys (I think). We pretty much all met each other for the first time last night at 5 p.m. But we somehow clicked. Our first game, I got put on first and batted 7th. We won 29-9! We had a couple errors on the field, but nothing that hurt us in the long run (obviously). We then came back to play at 7, had some new boys show up to play this time around, and I'm pretty sure our final score was 18-6....domination. I don't know any of these people besides my sorority sister, but we all get along really well and play together really well.

I also had a little bit of an ego boost after the game. The guy who played shortstop in the first game told me that he's really glad that I'm playing at first because he feels comfortable throwing the ball across the diamond to me. That's right, I'm a bad-ass first baseman :)

We play again tonight at 6. If we win, we play at 8. I'm not even going to jinx it and tell you about the other scenario. But I really do think that we have a good shot at playing pretty far in the bracket.

This team of random people has helped me remember why I used to love softball.

Happy Wednesday friends!