The Things on My Mind

Last night was the end of another softball season. It was probably the best season of sports that I was personally involved in. There’s a little backstory but even though the ending wasn’t what I was hoping for, it just makes me excited for the next one.

I’ve played sports most of my life: soccer, baseball, football, cross-country and track, lacrosse. Some I was good at, some not so good but I always had fun. When I got into the real world, sports were something I watched on TV. I can remember the twinge of sadness when watching Jaret Wright start a World Series Game 7 and I was the same age as him. That was the moment I realized that I would never play professional baseball. Fast forward a few years and the company I work for had a softball team. I still had all my equipment here in New York. I would go to the cages for fun with friends and could still put the bat on the ball. I missed playing a sport. I was in. And boy, was I hooked.

That first year, I was the new guy, and unsurprisingly out of shape. I pulled a quad in the first game and sat out for a few games. But I still went. Didn’t miss a single game. We weren’t great but we played, we drank, and we had fun. I obsessed about run differentials and hitting to the opposite field. I checked out the league website every day to see where we were in the standings and to see how the teams we were playing the next week did. After the games, when the bus took us to the bar, I’d stay out late and have drunken discussions about how to change the lineup or how we should be recruiting more girls.* I made some really good friends and when it ended, I couldn’t wait until next year. So I didn’t. Some of us decided to play in a fall league. That one was less serious, more about hanging out while playing than necessarily going all out for the win. I thought of it as keeping loose in the off-season.

The next year was much like the previous. We were good and improved to a winning record, just missing the playoffs. My obsession grew and I stepped up my trips to the cages with a few other die-hard players. Mind you, this is all starting in February for a season that didn’t start until May. It was kind of crazy but at least I wasn’t alone in my efforts. And they paid off: I started off on a tear, hitting somewhere around .500 over seven games and I recieved the honor of being elected by my teammates to the All-Star team. But the best feeling was when we made the playoffs. I finally missed my first game in three seasons and it was our first playoff win. I can’t even recall now what the reason was. I’m guessing it was a wedding or something that took me out of town and believe me, it hurt. I came back and we had two games of the double-elimination round on the same day. Unfortunately, we lost them both but we were happy to get there. Fall softball (with slightly more seriousness than the previous fall) filled the void and kept me going until next year.

Due to construction on the fields, last year and this year were shortened seasons. Instead of games every week, it was every other week. No All-Star game, no double-elimination and four less teams made the playoffs. Last year, we improved again but were unlucky in the post-season. Top that off with the fall league selling out and that was a recipe for a long winter. The preseason saw us practicing harder than we had in any other season. I could tell in the first practices that we had a real shot this year. The rookies were looking good and people were playing together, like the teams I had been a part of when I was younger. We started strong with three wins right out of the gate. We had a fantastic game with a walk-off game winning run that may have been the best game of all five of my seasons. Sadly, one of our coaches, who had been the center of it all, went off on sabbatical and missed out on the end of the season. We finished as the seventh seed out of the eight teams that made the playoffs, which meant we would be playing the second seed, a team that had only lost two games all year. We demolished them with a mercy rule** win. We were riding high and looking forward to our next opponent. Which leads me to last night.

We came in better prepared and more motivated than ever. I barely slept the night before and all day at my desk, I couldn’t concentrate because I just wanted to get out on the field. The whole bus ride to the game, I was talking with a good friend of mine, one that I made through playing, another one of the obsessed. I told him I was so excited and that I had a really good feeling. The team we were playing had the most league championships and most playoff appearances. This wasn’t going to be a cakewalk but we had a shot. If you’ve gotten this far but didn’t notice the title, you can probably guess how it ended. We plain didn’t show up. Not the team that we had been all year. Not the team that had gotten us this far. We put up a good effort and there were flashes of that team: a couple of great defensive, one of our girls hitting a bomb of a home run. In the end, we lined up, told the other team “good game”, and it was over.

There’s not going to be fall softball this year. The league sold out again. So the winter will be another one of planning and keeping loose. I’ll probably hit the cages a few times. Maybe start throwing the ball around early and recruit harder around the office. But I have to say this: it was a great season. We have a lot to be proud of and we’re going to improve again next year. If you’re reading this and you played with me, this year or any year: thanks for everything. Thanks for showing up, for giving it your all, for drinking like a champ on the field or at the bar, for putting up with my cornering you in the elevator and asking “Are you playing tonight?” and not always being able to hide my disappointment when the answer was no. Thanks for letting me play with you. And I’ll see you at the cages in a few weeks. In the end, next season isn’t that far away.

* Our league is co-ed and to keep things balanced, the rules stipulate that you have to have to have a minimum of three girls in the line up. That will give you an automatic out at the end of the batting order and a guy has to play catcher. So you really want four girls there.

** For those of you not familiar, go here. In our league, it’s a 15-run lead after five complete innings. There was some discussion on the field about the rule but luckily, we keep a copy of the league rules on hand for just such an occasion.