It Was a Crazy Weekend of Softball…

(The title is a tribute to OAR’s “Crazy Game of Poker” which I put on the Case softball warmup tape one year…)

A couple weeks ago, after two big wins over a good team, my Saturday night softball team hit the bar to split a couple celebratory pitchers of beer. I’m new to the team this year so I asked one of the team members sitting next to me, “So how did you all meet? How was the team formed?”

This is as innocent a question as any. I expected the traditional, “Well, Sally works with Billy. Billy is Mary’s husband. Mary’s cousin is Joe, and Ryan and Chris are Joe’s friends.” That’s how most teams are formed, but not my Saturday night team. The guy turns to me and says, “Well, most of us met through AA and NA (Narcotics Anonymous).” I didn’t know how to respond.

This was a source of amusement to my friends – that I would be out drinking with my Saturday night AA softball team. It was all fun and games until this weekend when our star right center fielder couldn’t make it to the games because she was hospitalized after a near-fatal heroin overdose. Geez.

So that was Saturday night softball. Then there was Sunday night softball.

My Sunday team has always been very tame. I like playing with them because people are competitive without being jerks. We just have a lot of good people and we really like playing with each other. (Ummmm, yeah.) The last time we played together was 3 weeks ago and we got blown out by a team full of a-holes. We didn’t play well as a team and everyone was really frustrated. It was not fun. I wasn’t even looking forward to Sunday’s games. I had no idea it would be so interesting.

Guess which of these things happened on Sunday?
A) A 20 yr old kid almost died on the field
B) Our shortstop caught a line drive deflected off our third baseman’s glove
C) Two people were having sex on a 30 foot hill in leftfield
D) The local riffraff pushed a shopping cart down a 50 foot hill in right field
E) The umpire was hung over and ralphed next to the backstop
F) ALL OF THE ABOVE

The answer, of course, is F. It was a circus. In my 20 years of playing ball, I have never experienced anything close to the freak show that was on display on Sunday night.

In the second inning of the first game, their left center fielder fielded a base hit and threw the ball in. He then did a log roll on the ground. I thought that was a little dramatic for twisting an ankle, or whatever. Then he continued rolling on the ground, screaming, and swearing and yelling for someone to call an ambulance. Then he yelled for someone to call his mom. It became clear that he was not injured but instead was having a serious reaction to something. It was really frightening. The ambulance came within 5 minutes and he was able to walk to it under his own power. He said he had a pacemaker and I think it was like, electrocuting him or something. Everyone felt so hopeless. I cried at the thought of a 20 yr old guy dying on the softball field during a co-ed rec league game. After he got loaded up, we resumed play.

Last year, I was in Chihuahua for work during the playoffs and our #2 pitcher took a ground ball off her chest and almost died, so everyone on our team was particularly sensitive about health issues on the field. (Knock on wood) I have never personally been on a ball field before and thought someone I was playing with might die.

In the third inning of the first game, their team hit a line drive between our third baseman and shortstop. The ball tipped of the third baseman’s glove and the shortstop was able to react (reflexes like a cat!) and caught the ball. It was the craziest play because the tip didn’t really slow the ball down or pop it into the air. It was more of a deflection and I couldn’t believe the SS came up with the ball. Again, in my 20 years of playing ball, I’ve never seen a play like that.

In the second inning of the second game, a couple was going at it on top of the hill in leftfield. There was no removal of clothes and they probably weren’t having sex but they were making out for like 45 minutes. At a public park. On top of a hill. They had an audience of about 100 people. It was really distracting.

In the next inning, some kid went to the top of the other hill and pushed a shopping cart down the hill. It rattled and rolled the whole way down. Hills are fun, and I guess the novelty never wears off. When you’re young, you can roll down them, or roll things down them, and when you’re older, you can have sex on top of them.

In the next inning, I was pitching and between pitches, the umpire, who had been acting kind of odd all afternoon, turned, walked to the backstop and threw up. Between innings, he had been lying down and it seemed as though he was drugged up or something. Hopefully he was just hung over. The very next pitch got by my catcher and the ball rolled into the vicinity of the vomit. The girl just stood there and looked at the ball and where it came to rest. Then she gingerly picked it up, inspected it, and then threw it to me. I looked at it before I carefully plucked it from my glove. I guess it didn’t roll into the throw up but it still made me kinda queasy to think about it. Yuck.

So know that I’ve told the story of what actually happened, I invite you to write your own story including the 5 elements above and see if you can make it more entertaining that the real events…