A Tale of Two Leagues

Last night was supposed to be my grand venture into the softball league in P-Town, but due to a nice, steady rain the games were cancelled for Wednesday night.

Well tonight, sitting back watching the U.S. Open on ESPN, I received a phone call from a fellow coach and he was looking for players for their league opener. With ten minutes to game time, they only had 6 players. I agreed to play.

The team that I was playing on is a decent team, older guys in their mid-30's (and a few into their 40's) who still could play good softball. We were up against a team of younger guys (even younger than me), a team of post-high school graduates from P-Town who could hit the ball quite well.

We were screwed from the start, especially on defense: we only had 9 guys. I played center field, and for the first couple of innings of the first game, our defense was solid. I made a few good plays and couldn't hit the cut-off man for the life of me!

We scored 10 runs in the first two innings, then it seemed like everything shut off. We ended up losing in the bottom of the 7th inning 11-10. On defense, with three outfielders it really starts to hurt, especially when the other team starts hitting the gaps. I felt like I was participating in a track meet and I was drenched in sweat, from head to toe (and the humidity didn't help either).

My batting wasn't too shabby out of the gate, as I went 2-for-3 with a base-on-balls and managed to hit in a couple of ribbies. What also hurt us on offense is that we had to take an out for our "10th batter," which I really didn't think that was all fair, but hey, those are the rules.

Another interesting rule in this league is that there is no height limit to the pitches! If I were pitching, I'd have a field day with the strike zone ... but again, there was no ASA umpire and they were using a carpet for the strike zone (if you know my history with a carpet, it's not a good one).

With our team let down after our last-inning loss, we played the same team again right away. Tired and weary, we gave up 13 runs in the 1st inning and we still couldn't find our bats. We played the "walking game," or as I like to call it "kissing your sister," as we scored most of our runs by taking the walk and walking in the runs. Sure, it's a little frustrating because in softball, you're expected to hit the ball. In the end, we were 10-runned by the 5th inning and the game was called.

I, for one, didn't hit the ball so well during the second game. I went 0-1 with 2 bases-on-balls. I also misjudged a few fly balls in center (in my defense, once the lights are on it was really difficult to judge the balls since the light towers are so low to the ground).

But surprisingly enough, I'm not too sore -- thankfully that I had taken up jogging to cut back on the soreness and weariness in anticipation of the upcoming softball season. Only my feet are sore (due to the spikes) and my lower back aches just a bit, but other than that, I feel tip-top (I may not say the same thing in the morning!).

In comparision to the HomeTown league, I consider the league in P-Town to be of a "lesser-league": there are some rule differences, the games aren't under the supervision of ASA umpires, and the competition isn't as strong as it is back Home. Although it is the first week of the season here and I haven't seen much or seen all the teams, it just feels different to play here.

And you thought the HomeTown's outfield was lumpy ... so should see this place. Wow. It's like a roller-coaster in some places.