Maxy was sick today! Yeay!
Poor fellow. We think it might be a delayed reaction to Sunday night's Ruby Tuesday disaster, but either way, he's been home all day, never straying too far from the bathroom, poor chap.
But for me, it's been great! It's been lovely to have company all day and I've enjoyed playing nursie for him, while having an excuse to watch 'The West Wing' nonstop.
Fortunately he was feeling better by this evening, when I played my first ever softball game. Since Patrick invited me to join his team a couple of weeks ago, it's been rained off each Tuesday. But it's been super sunny - and incredibly humid - here today (it's the first day we've had to put our air conditioning on. All hail the A/C!), so softball was very much on this evening.
I thought we'd be playing in the shadow of the Washington Monument on the Mall, where I've seen lots of people playing softball. But we played miles further on from the Mall, right by the FDR monument on the tidal basin. The nearest metro is about a mile and a half away so we were knackered by the time we got to the monument, only to discover that the FDR monument is this hellish complex of waterfalls and statues and big marble slabs that seems to go on forever. So there we were - tired, boiling and running late - stuck in this neverending village of FDR remembrance. Gnaaah.
We finally made it to the West Potomac Park - with not a shadow-casting obelisk in sight - and met up with Patrick and the rest of his office team. Patrick's firm is really big, so it turned out that he didn't know half the team, either, so I didn't feel too much like a duck out of water. Erm, except for not having the team strip or knowing which hand to wear my mitt on (Alison kindly lent me her glove. Glove! What wimps these Americans are - a softball ball can't be any harder than a cricket ball, for goodness sake. Now granted, I played wicketkeeper, but *most* people don't need gloves for catching hard balls!).
There were mercifully too many people there, so I got 'benched' for the 'top half' of the game, to give me time to get to grips with what's going on. Turns out softball is nothing like rounders. I thought, because it isn't baseball, that it'd be nice and genteel - soft, you might say - like rounders. Alas, no. I really can't discern any difference between softball and baseball, other than they bowl underarm in softball. But you have the same bat, the ball's basically the same but a bit bigger and people wear mitts.
Our team was basically pretty rubbish. We had a few stars (of which Patrick was certainly one, which was surprising, because he's so elfin), but the rest were pretty rubbish at hitting and fielding.
I tried my best to keep up with how many strikes you're allowed (three) and what a 'ball' is (basically if the bowler bowls it wide or too low/high). Apparently if you get four 'balls' in a row, you get a 'walk' to first base, which is a Good Thing.
By the time it came for me to bat - I kid you not - my legs were really wobbly. All of a sudden, I couldn't work out how to hold the bat or how to stand at the batting plate. Do you stand side on, like on telly? Or face-on, like in rounders? (I soon learnt that the answer to any question about softball that ends with 'like in rounders' is invariably 'no'.) And how high do you hold the bat? In rounders, you just hold it with one hand out to your side, but in softball you hold it with two hands, up by your ear, behind your head. But I worried that I didn't stand much chance of hitting the ball with the bat all the way back there.
Anyway, with legs shaking and Maxy adorably shouting encouragement and whoops from the sideline (despite being poorly), I took my first ball. It fell down by my feet, but I went to hit it anyway. I got a strike and apparently if I'd left it, it would've been a ball. So it was a Bad Thing that I tried to hit it.
The bowler just keeps bowling until a) you hit it or b) you take three strikes and are out or c) there are four 'balls' and you progress to first base automatically. I managed to hit the second ball and made it to second base. Success!
In rounders, the idea is to get around the four bases just as soon as possible. So it's a sneaky skill to start running as soon as the next batter hits the ball - you get round quicker that way and free up bases behind you in case the next batter is very fast at running. So as soon as the next guy hit the ball, I ran to third base.
It turns out that, in softball, there are base coaches at first and third bases, telling you when to run. So they take care of the strategy and you're just the monkey, running when told to. I didn't gather this from the six innings I'd watched from the sidelines, so was merrily making my way to third base, despite a big burly man in our strip at third base telling me to go back and motioning with his hands. In retrospect, 'go back' might also have been what everyone was shouting at me from our team's camp. But I thought all of them - third base man included - were just kind of encouraging me, so I kept going.
When I got to third base, big burly man (who transpired to be the third base coach) was able to tell me close up and to my face to 'go back' but, with the arrogance of a rookie, I trusted in my mad wicked rounders skillz and just assumed he was being cautious/wrong.
Then I looked behind me just in time to see me get run out at second base.
Yes, this confused me too. What happened - I think - was that the batter behind me hit a 'fly' ball that looped up into the air and was caught by a fielder. In softball, you're not allowed to progress around the bases until the ball has hit the ground. So because I illegally left second base before this happened, I was eligible for being run out. Which I guess accounts for the now-wise shouts of 'go back'.
A softball innings lasts as long as it takes for three people to get out, so me getting out in error at the same time as the batter was caught out was a Bad Thing and I felt terrible. Patrick was kind enough to try to take the blame, for not explaining all the rules to me, and the team were very nice to me. But I felt so guilty, as they'd obviously done their best to stop me messing up by shouting so much as I was running.
I felt crushed at being out, much like I did when I was little. I was so pleased that Max was there to hug me, or else I may've sloped off and either sulked or cried a la the 10-year old Soph (probably the latter).
The other team soon dispatched of one more member of our team and it was our turn to field. Fortunately I was put where only a left-handed hitter with a very good eye would've sent the ball, so the innings was pretty uneventful for me.
Just as well because, not only can I not throw further than a foot in front of me, but when I was throwing a ball around with Patrick before the game, I was using the glove just like an extension of my hand, but he taught me that in softball, you've got to kind of put the glove in front of your body, twisting your wrist and arm left, which felt really unnatural.
I had one more undistinguished innings as a batter, managing to get round without committing a terrible blunder and making sure I listened to the base coaches very carefully (despite the fact that they kept using funny words that baffled me).
After our resounding defeat (which can't all have been my fault), I stuck around for some informal training from some teammates and was taught how to bat properly. It was really weird to have to teach my body how to do something for the first time in so long. I've been whacking stuff with rackets and bats for so long that I never had to really pay attention in PE when the teacher was showing you how to grip the bat, or whatever. But this time, I had to really pay attention as to how to hold the bat and where to put my weight as the ball came to me.
As is typical, I became really good practising with the nice teaching man, but as soon as I stepped onto the plate to hit some balls to the rest of the team in the field, all my learning whizzed right out of the ear it had gone into and my body went into counter-productive autopilot, swinging wildly at anything and everything that came near it. What's worse is, when I went out to do fielding practice, I had one opportunity to throw the ball and in doing so, really badly twisted my back and it still hurts now. I worry that I'll forever have a twinge in my back, reminding me of my disastrous softball debut.
I felt a little deflated and embarrassed as we bid farewell to the team and got a taxi home (it's SUCH a long way from the metro!), but had enjoyed messing around in shorts and a t-shirt outside and was so pleased that Maxy my cheerleader was there. We went for comfort food at the diner round the corner from our apartment, then cheered me up with some 'West Wing'.
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