Today’s adventure was a softball tournament – one of my colleagues arranged a team from our company and practice time. We never had all of us on the practice pitch at the same time, but we did learn a few moves. A couple on the team play on other teams, a couple have a history playing cricket, one generally plays tennis. Despite our lack of together time, we managed pretty well. There were nine teams in the tournament of varying levels of skill. One team we played had a fantastic infield game. And they beat us handily.
Interesting rules: the normal three strikes and you’re out, four balls and you walk, but instead of three out, all nine batters have a chance before switching to the outfield. The games lasted 45 minutes.
So each team got to play four games. We had lost two when the last round came up. Whereas the other teams we’d been up against had either practiced more than we had or less, but all three of them were pretty competent. The last team was comprised of young men from, I’m guessing, the local group home. The pitcher was pretty good, but in general they needed a little extra help. Still a lot of fun, but kind of weird.
Between the various games, I managed two singles, one run, and an RBI, but there was a fly ball in the second or third game that I should have caught, but I let it drop. Gotta try harder on those next time. (Note that we actually had 11 batters,though only the nine fielders – for this reason some of us only batted in two innings out of three.
All in all great fun. There’s another on October 11 which I’m pretty sure I’ll miss.
Joe Jots 