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RRBS Softball Game Log July 17, 2007 Players: Kaitlyn Christopher, Matt DiStasi, Kelsey Fritts, Mike Jennings, Andy Lang, Stacy Riley, Jon Stropes, Jamie Tate, Matt Thompson, Ally Wells, Erin ??? After the disappointing, er, horrible game we the previous week, I was looking forward to a little redemption. There was not going to be any one-week layoff this time, we’d had gotten our form back and we’d all spoken of how determined we were to get our first win. We’d even agreed to get together to practice before our game. I was feeling good about this one. Earlier in the week, I had taken it upon myself to improve my pitching. I had tried to get someone to come out and practice with me, but as surprising as this may sound, not a lot of people are anxious to stand at home plate and catch balls for an hour, especially if being thrown by me. So all by myself I grabbed my new sack of balls, went out to the field and threw pitches until I felt my arm was going to die. And though this sounds very depressing, and it was a pain in the ass to go collect the balls from behind home plate every seven pitches (because I only had seven balls) it was effective, and I felt more comfortable on the mound. Again, I was feeling good about this week. Before game day, I was able to coax Staz to the field to practice a little. He got a little batting practice in while I worked even more on my pitching. After about 75 hurls, I let Staz take a whirl on the mound. We played an imaginary game of ghost baseball while he practiced, leaning the fine art of slow-pitch pitching. He noted that it wasn’t as easy as I made it look. Actually, that’s not how he said it. His wording was more like “I’m not going to blame our loses on your pitching anymore.” I didn’t know if that was a compliment or not. So Tuesday finally rolls around, and once again it looked like rain. This summer, it had rained only four times; once on the Fourth of July and the other three times were on Tuesdays before our games. I was starting to think that softball wasn’t God’s favorite pastime. Either that, or he was trying to give us a not so subtle hint that we shouldn’t be playing this sport. But the weather wasn’t the worst of our problems. Our resident Ringer, Kambria, would not be joining us for game four. She had decided to play favorites, and leave our ragtag group of misfits in order to play with her “real” softball team down in Florida for the National Championships. The good news was that Jessica was going to be back, and as far as we could tell, Kimmy would be back too… though no one had heard from her since my short telephone call with her the previous Tuesday.
Oh, and did I mention that there was a possibility that Andy was not going to be able to make it to the game? Our game was scheduled for 8:30, and he was scheduled to make a court appearance to defend a speeding ticket across town at 7:00. Now we were down three players with two hours till game time. Oh, and did I mention that you had to have at least 8 players on the field to keep from forfeiting the game? All those good feelings from earlier in the week were disappearing, quickly. As I jumped into my car to head over to the practice field, I started racking my brain (and my address book) trying to figure out who would fill in. A number of girls had expressed interest in playing, but this was short notice, and you know how much prep work girls need to do anything. The first thing I did was call Andy and tell him that he’d better make sure his ass was there on time because if not, there wasn’t going to be a game. I then asked if he could call Jamie and see if she knew anyone while I did the same thing on my end. He assured me he’d do his best, and that he had a "can’t lose" strategy for winning his court case in no time. Neither of these promises made me feel much better. My second call was to Stacy, who had said in the past that she wouldn’t mind playing, and she had also said she was going to be there anyway that night to watch us. When I called her she was cooking dinner, and because of this, didn’t know if she’d be able to make it to the field in time to play. She also said she didn’t have a glove, and had never played before so she didn’t know if she wanted to. I disappointedly told her that this was okay, and that I would call other people, but just in case, could she dress as if she was going to play. Begrudgingly, she agreed. Next I called Crissy G., who was also mad at me because I hadn’t asked her to play in the past. I figured she for sure would want to join in the fun. As it turns out, she would have loved to play, and could play any other night, but she was doing laundry, cooking dinner and reading a book. Three fantastic reasons why she couldn’t come. Whatever. I begged, pleaded, and even tried to guilt her into coming, but it wasn’t going to happen. I knew she was doing it out of spite; she’s always enjoyed torturing me. Next was Danielle, who had also been pissed she wasn’t asked to be on the team. I knew shed say okay. Wrong. After reprimanding me for the short notice, she informed me that she couldn’t come because she was having a date night. Again I was told that if I ever needed a sub for a future game, let her know. This was starting to sound like a broken record. Julie and Melanie were next on the call list. The first was feeling under the weather, and the latter was having company over to watch a move. Once again I was assured that if it were any other night, they could have done it. Was I in the Bermuda triangle of friends here… they were all disappearing. By now I had been sitting in the parking lot of the practice field for almost 10 minutes while Kaitlyn and Mike tossed the ball around. Kaitlyn beckoned for me to join them, but I angrily waved her off because practice meant nothing if there was no game. I probably should have told them this, but I didn’t want to bring everyone’s spirits down. Right before I was about to go nuts, my phone rang and it was Andy with a little bit of good news. He had won his court case in record time by using the old “I had an asthma attack” excuse, and he was no on his way to practice. I asked him if he’d been so lucky in talking with Jamie and finding a girl. He said he hadn’t heard back from Jamie and that I should call her. I said I would.
I asked her in my panic stricken state if she’d been able to get a hold of anyone. She said that she knew of three girls that played softball, but hadn’t been able to get a hold of any of them. She said she had left messages with them to call her, and I said that she’d done a great job, and if she heard from them, let me know. I also let her know that I would continue my search because by my count, we were still two girls short with a little more than an hour before game time. By now, Stropes had shown up, and I had recruited him to help me find people. He tried three of four girls he knew, but he got the same refrain that I did about “if this were any other night.” I just about completely run out of options by now. Then, to make matters worse, when I finally did get out of the car and join the group, Kaitlyn told me that Ally was running late driving up from Bloomington, and might not be there in time for the start of the game. Now we were really up shit creek. Five guys + Two Girls = forfeit. I explained this to the team (that being Kaitlyn, Mike and Stropes) and they were none to pleased. Mike asked me if we were fine in the male department, and I told him yes. (As a side note, he asked me this same question two or three more times before the game… I got the feeling he was looking forward to replaces one or more of us with a few of his more skilled male softball friends. But at least he was doing it in a nice way). Then, as if inspiration was sent from above, Kaitlyn remembered that her mom was coming to watch, and that we might be able to talk her into playing. Kaitlyn called up her mom, asked her to play and… she said no. However, she asked if Kaitlyn’s sister Kelsey could play. I said hell yes she could play! That was agreed upon, and now we had our first sub. Or did we… After hanging up the phone, Kaitlyn asked if there was an age limit for the league and I mentioned that I thought it was 18. Uh-oh, Kelsey was only 15. This was going to be tricky. Oh, to add to the dilemma, we were running out of time and she didn’t have shorts or a mitt to play in. Fortunately Ally would be swinging by her place on the way up to the field and was going to be able to bring her cousin some shorts. Around this time Jamie showed up and we filled her in on all the details. She also brought the good news that her old boss, Erin, had called her, and had agreed to come up and play with us. Jamie said she didn’t know how good she was, but that she had recently moved and had brought her mitt with her. I felt this was a good sign. But as with everything else, there was a snag. She lived quite a distance away from the field, so she may be running late. Right then and there I called Stacy and begged her to come to the field on time and to be dressed to play. I told her we had all our subs, but two girls (Ally and Erin) were going to be late and we needed a fill in to at least start the game. Still unsure about what she was getting into, Stacy agreed, and we were now at least not going to have to forfeit. I was so stressed I could barely see strait, so I did what any good coach would do, left the field announced and bought some beer. Bt the time I had gotten back Staz and Andy had shown up by now, and Kelsey was close. Everyone but me was practicing. At this point, all I wanted to do was sit in the dugout and drink beer. When Kelsey showed up with Kaitlyn’s mom, Mike was able to coax me out and throw some pitches. Bad news again… they sucked. Where had all the magic I had back in practice gone? I know… it was being drowned by Bud Light.
I was wrong, things did get worse. When we arrived at the ball park, running a little late, we noticed that on our field stood the dickhead Ump from game #2 that threatened to kick me out of the game for bad pitching, and said Stropes had no clue how to run the bases. This was just great. We were going to have three illegal players (including one minor) and Captain Rule Book was going to be umping our game. Let the fun begin. Unusually our games start a little later than the scheduled time, but you just knew our favorite umpire wasn’t going to let that happen. He made sure to let both teams know that he was starting the clock right now and we’d better be ready to take the field. The good news was that we were the visiting team so we’d be batting first, and I could place all the people who weren’t present near the end of the batting order. The bad news was that we didn’t do so hot batting, and by the time I had the batting order filled out, we had gotten three outs and we due out on the field.
Normally this strategy wouldn’t have been a bad one as most of the players in our league keep the ball near the infield when they hit. Only rarely does the ball go out to far right, or near second base. Not the case this week. Their first two shots were a line drive to second which rolled past Kaitlyn and Mike, and a hot shot down the right field line right toward Stacy who had to borrow a glove from the other team because she didn’t have one and Jon’s gigantor glove was being used. We’d been on the field for less than two minutes and they’d already exploited our weaknesses. After they’d scored three runs, Ally can running up, and we immediately sent her out on the field. Now she moved to left, Mike went back to left-center, Staz was in right-center and Stacy now had some company in right. We managed to put together some decent plays and got them out after only five runs. Now we had to bat again. Around this time, we had to let our “rookies” try their hand at batting. Both Kelsey went up and tried her hand at batting and did about as well as her sister did her time up. After her, Staz went up and got walked which meant Stacy got to take a free base, something she was very happy about. We ended up scoring a run, before getting out number three, but that did lift our spirits enough to not be too afraid to go back out onto the field. Now, if I hadn’t mentioned it already, the mega-ump didn’t buy the fact that Kelsey was of age, and kept asking her how old she was. But he never just came right out and asked, he tried to be sneaky by asking her what grade she was in, where she planned on going to college, and what courses she was taking. She took the high road, and the smart road by sticking to the tried and true answer of shrugging her shoulders. She made us all proud. When that method didn’t work, he stopped grilling her and turned his attention to Kaitlyn’s mom who’d been busy snapping pictures of the team. She too held the line that her youngest daughter was 18 and headed off to college. And though he never let the topic go, he never threatened to eject her or disqualify us. But, to avoid any more conflict we decided to move Stacy to catcher, let Jamie’s friend Erin (who’d just shown up) go to second, and sent Kaitlyn to the outfield. And while this did get him off of the age issue, he found something new to complain about. He turned his efforts of ejection to me and my pitching, which he still claimed to be illegal even though I was using the EXACT technique he’d shown me last time. This guy really didn’t like us. After two times at bat, Stacy decided to take a spot back in the bleachers with the rest of our fan base, leaving us with our two subs of Erin and Kelsey. Erin was immediately initiated into the group by taking a line drive right to the abdomen while tending second place. Though we all let out an audible “ewwww” she was able to make the play. Kelsey had to go back behind the plate and hang out with dick-head the rest of the game. Aside from those high lights, the game dragged on for a few more innings as time ticked off the clock. Neither team was doing very well. The “home” team had only had the one big inning, and though they were getting a lot of hits, weren’t able the score. Our fielding had improved, but our batting had gone into the toilet. Mike, Jon and Andy were struggling, Kaitlyn, Ally and I were doing our normal routine and Kelsey and Erin were playing how you’d expect subs to play. Only Jamie and Staz were being consistent hitters. That’s when we decided we were just going to stop swinging at bad pitches, which was our biggest weakness. And with one more at bat, we thought we might as well try something new. As it turns out, this was also the same inning that the other team decided to switch pitches. Now I don’t know if you know this, but when you mix a cold pitcher with a team that had decided not to swing at anything, you’ve got what we like to call the perfect storm. After walking three straight players, and giving up two hits, the guy was totally perplexed and we had him on the ropes. Throw in the fact that every time you walk a guy the girl gets to take a base too, and we were crawling back into this game one cheap run at a time. We went all the way through the batting order with only Erin and Stropes getting outs on fly balls. And after Ally and I were able to get on base after Jamie, this left Mr. Walk himself, Andy Lang, up to bat to bat, down by one. The other team was getting restless; they weren’t liking this new strategy at all. Unfortunately, neither was our biggest fan, the umpire. The pitcher threw a pitch that was short and to the left, but he called it a strike. I knew he did it on purpose in order to get Andy to swing. He wasn’t about to let us walk another player in to tie the game. This pissed Andy off as he swung at the next pitch, which was about a foot short of the plate, and popped it up for the pitcher to catch for the third out. And there it was, our comeback was over, and the game was lost… again. At least this hell game had come to an end.
As we all walked away, there weren’t the usual smiles, or hugs, or anything else. We kind of walked away quietly, except for Andy who was cursing the umpire. Could it be that the loses were finally getting to us? I sure hoped not, we still had six more games to play. At least I still had Jon’s super-sized glove to think about… that could still bring a smile to my face. |
As game time approached, I found out that what I had counted on as “the good news” was turning out to be the worse news. Through no fault of her own, Jessie was not going to be able to make it to the game because her daughter had developed a high fever, and needed to be watched. Oh, and Kimmy was refusing to get back to me in any way shape or form. It was 6 o’clock, and I’d not gotten a return phone call, e-mail, text message or smoke signal. Now we were down two girls, with only two hours remaining until game time. This wasn’t good.
At this time in our relationship, Jamie and I hadn’t really spoken that much. You may remember from previous logs that she wasn’t too keen on my batting skills (seeing as how my hits always led to here being thrown out at second) so I was a bit apprehensive about calling her. Also, I didn’t really want to be a pest because I’d already texted and had Andy do my dirty work just an hour earlier. So I dialed the phone and she picked up, and to my surprise she was very nice. At first I thought it was because her phone didn’t have caller ID and she had no idea who it was, but as it turns out she knew it was me and was just a nice person all around.
The only thing that was able to snap me out of it was the mention of Kelsey needing a glove to play with. Fortunately Stropes always carries an extra one with him. Unfortunately that glove is the same size as my head. It would have been too big for me to use, and here we were asking a petite 15-year-old girl who’d never played before to lug this thing around. It told Jon, “We want a glove for her to be able to field with, not to sit in.” He got pissed that I was making fun of him, and even more upset that everybody else found it funny too. We did a little glove swapping to where Andy volunteered to use the big glove, and Kelsey could use his. By the way, even Andy found this glove to be way too big. Now that she had a glove, Kelsey could practice fielding. Everything seemed to be working out fine until we noticed KELSEY IS LEFT HANDED! Now, not only were we asking her to lie about her age, play a sport for the first time, and use a glove too big for her, we had to add on playing the game with her non-dominant hand. But I couldn’t worry about that now, it was game time and we had to go. As we packed up to leave, I announced to the group that if anyone needed a ride to the park, Jon had extra room in his glove. This made me smile. I tried to keep that joke in my mind to keep me happy, along with the fact that at least things couldn’t get any worse. 
This was bad news because even though we had the minimum number of players (8) on the field, we didn’t have enough girls to make it even. Turns out you have to have at least 4 girls on the field at any given time. And since Ally and Erin hadn’t arrived yet, Stacy was asked to run onto the field, something she wasn’t happy about doing. Now this left us with nine players, still one short of what we normally have. So we debated on how to tackle this issue. We decided to put Kelsey at catcher, Stacy in right field, Staz in left field, Mike in Center and Kaitlyn at second. Everyone else kept their normal positions. I could just feel Sarah, our sub from the previous game who we’d passed on our way to the field, rolling her eyes watching us. 
Though my mood had been sour the entire day, and the game didn’t help, I did have a few laughs as we posed for pictures for Kaitlyn’s mom near the dugout as the next team tried to get ready for their game. She couldn’t seem to get her camera to work, and ended up having to take five or six pictures. In some we were all smiles, in others we crouched, and finally we put on our “game faces.” Mike eventually got tired of the photography session and decided to moon our photographers. That pretty much put a period on the game. 
