Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m a geek. I don’t come off as a sports fan in any sense. And normally, you’d be right. I don’t usually follow sports in any sense of the word. I know about sports. I know fundamentally how to play football and soccer (football) and hockey and tennis. But I don’t really play anything.
But I did.
I used to play softball.
Growing up, my dad was a major sports fan. He’d watch everything. Mom only followed baseball because she’s a diehard Dodgers fan. At six, I wanted to play baseball, so my parents signed me up. After my first season, a girls softball league started, and I moved into that, where I played for ten years.
Yeah, that’s right. The bookwork and anime nerd played softball for ten years. And I’m rather proud of that fact.
Over the course of the first six, I played every position. I started out as short stop, moved to third base, then played second for a season. One of the coaches made me catcher for a year, which I wasn’t a fan of. I played first for awhile, but that got boring considering several of my repeated teammates could never throw a ball straight. I pitched for three games after one of our pitchers got hurt. For the rest of my time, I played outfield, because I wasn’t afraid of fly balls.
We were a rec league, which meant that we switched up teams every season and technically we weren’t supposed to be competitive. Yeah right. We could be vicious. They say that cheerleaders can be catty? Nailing a line drive at a third baseman because she’d been taunting you was considered another day at the field.
Softball was my escape for a good long while. My dad was an assistant coach for every season I played, right up until his passing in November of 2002. Mom was on the board of the league until I had to stop playing. I spent almost every night out at the fields, helping out, warming up the younger girls, working in the concession stand, and being a snack runner for the younger teams (because the older two divisions played after the younger girls, so we were there later).
I played up until the middle of my sophomore year of high school. I’d leave my final class and walk over to the fields (we rented them from the high school), and do as much of my homework as possible sitting outside the concession stand. Mom would show up about an hour later with we’d get everything prepped. If there was any time to spare between the final set up and the first players arriving, I’d practice pitching against the fence, since I had the training, but I was just the emergency picture.
I actually miss it. I had to give up playing because I was involved with the theater department at school, and was given an ultimatum: softball or theater. I wanted to keep doing both, but theater was for credit. Unfortunately, I think I made the wrong choice, as I had a terrible second semester in sophomore year, but I felt like I abandoned my teammates in softball so I couldn’t go back.
I actually fell out of all sports because I left softball behind. I didn’t follow the local teams or anything.
Then the pandemic started, and the MLB figured out how to play semi-safely. We could finally watch Mom’s favorite team, the LA Dodgers, every night, and so we did. Every game, every win and every loss, we watched them all.
And last night, they won the World Series. After the nightmare cheating incident against the Astros, we were so discouraged. But this year, our team won.
And they beat the Rays, who play in my former state. Ha.
If you can’t tell, I’m really happy about it. We were practically screaming during the final out, that perfect strike down the middle. (And the fact that the entire stadium booed the MLB commissioner, because of how he handled the Astro’s cheating scandal and how they got off with basically a slap on the wrist.)
So yeah. It’s been a good day. Off to watch a good movie with Mom before more Criminal Minds I think.
Until next time!