Returning to the Diamond

As we did last year, a good portion of the church softball team as well as some non-Wesley players are playing for the Off Road Tire city league team. We are Division III (out of three) but have a more solid team than last year’s incarnation.

We practiced for the first time last Thursday and it went pretty well. Decent hitting, tolerable fielding, enough to get people excited. We had a better-attended practice on Sunday. We went through the whole drill—infield practice, outfield practice, hitting, situational fielding, you name it. Again, some really exciting results there.

The problem, for me, was that we were practicing on a baseball field that apparently had fine gravel around home plate instead of dirt. That meant it was pretty painful to do my typical kneeling when I was back catching. On Thursday, I just wound up sitting and catching, which wasn’t a big deal. But with the full on practice on Sunday, I didn’t think that was the best. So I actually squatted in a catcher crouch most of the practice.

Those muscles apparently hadn’t been ever used, at least according to the report they gave me after practice and even more so Monday. I could get around walking and everything, but getting up and down, especially if I had to crouch down, was a real challenge.

I let Bobby, again coaching the team, that I wasn’t going to be able to catch for last night’s first ballgame. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t planning on starting me anyway, so that wasn’t a big deal. So I had a good seat for the action last night.

We were the visiting team and opened with two quick runs. Even though we scored, we were hitting a lot of ground balls (and getting a little help from the other team’s defense). They scored one in the bottom of the first to have the score sit at 2-1 after the first.

Neither team was doing much scoring after that. We continued to hit ground balls or easy flies and the other team did the same. They finally broke through with four runs in the bottom of the fourth to go up 5-2.

That was apparently the motivation the team needed. In the top of the fifth, we batted around and scored 14 runs to take a 16-2 lead. Finally some solid hits, combined with some questionable outfield and infield defense, allowed us to pile on the runs.

One of the outs in the inning came when Russell was on first (and I believe there was a runner on second as well) and Jon was up to bat. He hit one to right field, but Russell had to hesitate to see if it was caught. When it wasn’t, he took off, but Jon was right on his heels.

Gary, the third base coach at the time, held Russell up at third. However, Jon didn’t realize that and kept motoring around second. He realized the problem when he was at third with Russell standing there. Russell took off for home, but got caught in a rundown. Jon finally retreated to second, but not before Russell was tagged out. Easy to laugh about in a big inning, though.

Being that it is softball, no lead is safe and the opposition put up four in the bottom of the fifth. We answered with four in the sixth before they finished up with three in that inning. Final score: 20-12 Off Road Tire, sporting our first undefeated record.

Our next game is Thursday at 6:30. (I’ll try to get the schedule on the sidebar soon.) Hopefully I’ll be healed up enough to get into that one!