1. I played first baseman since I am a leftie. Well first baseman sees WAY too much action as you all can imagine. I was constantly having the ball thrown to me and constantly having girls running towards me at full speed. I didn't like either of these two things.
2. Since I played on first base, it was very convenient for my dad to stand right next to the fence and shout out orders such as: "Squat lower Nikki! Your not in ready position! Squat lower!" .. I didn't WANT to squat any lower.
So now you all understand my reasons for early retirement. But I'm back. But not by choice, mind you. You see, a friend sent out a group email inviting all of her friends to play on a coed team. I happened to "forget" to respond. By the time I remembered, I was pretty sure the team was full and we were just gonna be out of luck. Darn. Well her hubby had also sent out an email to his friends.. which included Tyson. I didn't realize it but Tyson signed us up. Sneaky little bugger. I had to buy a mitt. Do you know how hard it is to find a lefty mitt this late in the year? I had to search. And women's cleats my size? You can forget about it. Sigh.
Our first game was last night. Tyson didn't tell me that we needed to wear red t-shirts till right before the game. Well I dont HAVE a red t-shirt. I had to wear a dressy shirt since it is the only red I own. As you can imagine, that made me an easy target immediately for the other team. I'm sure they thought "who is this gomer that isn't even dressed right? We will make her pay" as they chuckled Evil-y to themselves. I could almost HEAR the giggles and nasty comments thrown my way. And make me pay they did! Not really but they probably wanted to.
I played outfield as you can imagine. Far far away where the ball would never find me.. or so I thought. The ball did in fact find me. On more than one occasion. One was a grounder and it came at me fast. I was in position to scoop it up off of the ground but instead it went right between my legs.. all the way out the the fence. It made me so mad that I had to sprint all the way over to retrieve the dang ball. And by then I was so far away from anyone, there was no chance that I would be able to throw that far.. would I? I heaved the ball as hard as I could with this big huge manly grunt/yell/scream and it slowwwwwwwly found its way to first base.
The next time, the ball flew high into the sky and came right towards me. I caught it. Then I dropped it. It was the worst thing ever because I caught it and I could hear my teammates cheering. As they cheered, as if it was in slow motion, the ball rolled slowly out of my glove and onto the ground. My face went from total shock that I had caught a ball and slowly became grotesquely distorted as I watched it slowly fall to the ground. Sigh. That isn't even the worst part. Sure it sucked missing the ball on a very important play, but since I caught/dropped the ball my hand hurt like crazy! I was so mad that my had was hurting and I had nothing to show for it.
One guy on our team is really nice and always shouts words of encouragement to me as I'm up to bat. I throw him my best smile under the circumstances. I'm pretty sure it doesn't come across as a smile. More of a tortured half smile half disfigured frown with the look of terror in my eyes. Kind of like when you tell a sobbing child that they can have something as soon as they give you a big smile and so they try but it comes out all distorted with tears running down their cheeks. Like that.
One of my favorite parts of this whole experience are the team names that we are playing against:
Blood Bath & Beyond
Spooners
I'd hit that
and ummmmmm
Sacks n racks
That is it for now. I have more I could write, but maybe I'll save it for another time. Like about the drunk girl that decided to join our team in the dugout. Another time guys. Another time.
