It is Always important that a lady comport herself with confidence and Poise in order to appear Carefree while trying out for an over-the-hill coed softball team. (I peed my pants a little…one of these fine products helped me keep my secret…sshhhh)
If I don’t write it down the minute it comes into my head, it runs out the back door of my mind as if trying to escape a crime scene, never to be seen again. Kind of like my kids running out the front door whenever I try to talk about old lady ailments. Can’t wait till they have to wear protective underwear. Speaking of peeing my pants a little…
A couple years ago I saw an ad on the Neighborhood website for an “over the hill” coed softball team and decided to try out. I mean, what could it hurt? Get some fresh air, a little exercise (because it is just low key baseball, America’s favorite pastime), and maybe make some new friends.
The team was for those over 60 with a desire to endure physical exertion and probable harm with a side of total humiliation. They had to lower the entry age to 50 to field a team. Was that a subtle sign that everyone over 50 in my neighborhood was dead except me? Or, maybe most were just more sound-minded than me, because the sound body was already a foregone conclusion. This lack of interest should have set off alarms in my head and dampened my interest, but it didn’t, because here I sit writing about responding to the recruitment posting and the experience that ensued.
I know a lot of women who are more concerned about their increasing bone fragility and failing bladders as the years pass. I should not have been surprised when I was the only female that showed up to try out.
Thankfully, I didn’t follow my first thought when I first read the call to arms… to run out and buy myself a new glove. But that’s only because I knew I wouldn’t have time to break it in properly and everyone knows how unwieldy and impossible it is to maneuver a stiff new leather laundry basket on the end of your arm up or over your head to catch a fast-flying sphere. I borrowed a glove.
I arrived and made the discovery that I was the only “girl.” Not wanting to insult anyone by walking away, I put my game face on and started having a catch with the team captain and recruiter to warm up. (Love that phrase, “having a catch; sounds so athletic.
Not too bad. No popping noises in my musculature, only the thud of the ball hitting my leather. Ohhh, yeah, HITTING the leather. The palm of my hand was seeing stars, but slowly it was all coming back to me now. And I remember that feeling – being part of a united effort, the easy banter and congratulatory remarks on a ball caught and the encouraging “next time” on a ball bouncing a good ten feet from me. I remember quite a few “next times” from my high school days.
We were younger then, and this was the first time on the field in 50 years for most of us. I was surprised to see there were some career jocks out there. You know the ones. A little too serious, a little too absorbed by the mechanics and techniques of hitting, throwing, catching. A little too self-aware in perfecting their form.
You could feel the disdain in the air when your throw was a few yards wide of the plate. You could hear the under-the-breath mutterings when you didn’t run quite fast enough. You could feel the eyes snapping when your throw bounced short of the target…twice. There were probably four of our eleven players that fell into that jock pot. Where most of us were wearing tee shirts, sweats, jeans or khaki shorts, they sported “athletic wear” and knee braces, and batting gloves… and baseball shoes, for god sake.
In high school I played on the team-to-beat in PE class. I batted fourth in the lineup…yep, I owned the “clean up” position. I could connect with that softball – there is a sound and a feel to the “whack” when you hit it solid, in the sweet spot. You just know you are going home on that one. I miss that sound, the tingle in the palm from the bat connecting with the ball.
I was a fair fielder, never wanted to play a base position – too much pressure and mental anxiety. If someone is on first and the ball is hit and someone is on third and the ball comes to me, who do I throw it to? You have to know these things without having to stop and draw exes, ohs and arrows in the dirt, like you have to know that a flush beats a straight. You don’t have time to pull out the matrix card you keep in your pocket to find the right combination and answer. That’s like cheating on a test, having note cards, or drawing on your hand (especially not good if you have to take your glove off to read your sweaty, ink-streaked palm). Besides the pressure of quick thinking, I did not have a strong arm to throw hard enough to reach home, and more importantly, I lacked predictability. Why do they say practice improves performance? They lie. No matter the sport, golf, tennis, bowling, darts, and probably tiddly-winks, there is no predictability about my performance outside the actual hitting of the softball. For some reason that gift was an anomaly, outside the norm. In spite of my shortcomings, and to some extent because of my batting prowess, our team won the championship. In those days there were no organized sports outside PE class for the female gender unless you were Olympic material. I wasn’t, so with graduation came the end of my softball career, and I hung up my glove, until this fateful Sunday afternoon.
I lasted through the entire practice; I get perseverance points for that. I caught fewer than I should have, threw like I always had (random and short), and never experienced that sweet whack of solidly connecting bat with ball. My gift was gone with the settling dust of my past career. But it was fun, and I did try, and I didn’t completely embarrass myself…or at least I was the only one privy to that one moment…that brings me back to peeing my pants a little as mentioned earlier.
I fell three times that afternoon, not the admirable and intentional diving for a ball, or sliding into home. No, these were full-on agony of da’feet-swamp falls, where you can’t lift your feet out of the quicksand as it’s sucking you down, and the off-balance feet-bolted to the ground timber-like crashes, and the always demoralizing tripping over invisible grass snakes. It was one of those snakes that permanently altered my stance on having any future in softball. The abrupt encounter with the grass caught me by surprise. Never saw it coming.
I suddenly found myself face down in the grass, eye to eye with a ladybug. The last part was a lie, there was no ladybug. I could maybe find a pithy moral to write down here. Like, just when you think you’re a lousy player, fate brings you a happy sign from the universe. Yeah, no, didn’t happen that way, but it would’ve been cool…right?
With my two previous falls I knew it was coming and like in dream sequence everything was in slow motion while I tried desperately to keep from landing hard. This time it came without warning, and seemingly without reason. My abrupt impact startled just a wee bit of pee out of me, and it was at that moment that I accepted the fact. I am no longer a player. I am no longer of an age to be out playing with the boys (or in this case the elderly gentlemen) of summer.
My last foray into the world of softball became another piece of history, I headed home and returned the glove, happy not to have made the financial commitment. I was grateful for not completely losing control of my bladder function, and finally I was relieved to not have broken a hip (that possibility only just now sinking in).
I am also happy to have tried. Except for the four super jocks (the ones with batting gloves and cleats) we were all in about the same phase of life. So I am sending a big shout-out to those kind gentlemen who allowed me to experience one last precious moment of feeling like part of a team. Overall, I give that sunny Sunday afternoon a solid thumbs up.
Never at a loss for words... 