Zona

Softball breakout!

I was warming up pre-game by jogging about 30 yards up and back from the bench. After one trip I decided to put a little more speed into it. Have you ever seen one of those old movies where the jalopy car sputters and backfires. Well I sputtered but did not backfire. It turns out that I have one speed now.

But that's okay because my pitching was dead on.

We won both games and I struck out a guy who was all mouth in our first meeting three weeks ago. Struck him out looking. Slow pitch softball, and a guy that hit the ball wherever he wanted in our last encounter watched a nice slow high arc of a pitch hit the ground to be called STRIKE THREE by the umpire.

I took a hundred pitches at the batting cage a couple of days ago to get my timing back and it DID help but in the first game I grounded out twice. In the second game my impatience reared it's head again and I was swinging early. I flied out to left field in my first at bat but in my second at bat I hit a line drive over the third baseman driving in two runs and I was even able to make it to second base wher I was promptly declared OUT.

You see, when I reach first base in an at-bat, somebody comes and runs for me. It's known as a courtesy runner. I usually call for one while I'm standing on the base. What I found out last night is that our captain can also announce that I will be using a courtesy runner in the pre-game meeting where the captains meet with the umpire to exchange line-ups. That means I HAVE to stop at first no matter where I hit the ball.

So what I thought was my first double in some 15 years ended up being a single with me being called out for running to second base. The runs still counted and I'm still pretty stoked that my hitless slump is over.