If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or email alerts. Thanks for visiting!
So naturally I jumped at the opportunity to play softball at the city-level league. Srikanth, a fellow blogger (now defunct) had gathered a motley crew of American and international students some of whom me included had never played softball in their life. More Cowbell, our team named after that hilarious skit on SNL met up for the first time just a day before our first game. Of course, it helped that we had been placed in the D+ level of the league i.e. a shade above the absolute novices although now I think we would have been better off in the lowest level.
Softball, for those ignoramuses out there, is an underarm version of baseball and to make it more easier, this league was a slow-pitch version i.e. you must gently lob the ball to the batter. Now you may think, wow! that sounds like cricket practice for girls :) but as we found out later, it is not as easy as it looks. Of course, the primary motive of More Cowbell was to have fun because frankly we knew that we wouldn’t be winning any game let alone have a winning season and qualifying for the playoffs. You can imagine the ease of predicting a team’s fortunes when the first meeting we were discussing the rules of the game and making clear that it is a ‘ball’ and not a ’strike’ if you don’t swing at a ball outside the ’strike zone’. The team as I mentioned earlier was an eclectic mix of undergrads, grad students, and soon-to-be dads; most of whom had never seen a game of softball let alone play one. But we all had seen baseball and thought if it is easier than that, how hard can it be.
Armed with our own gloves, we practiced catch before hitting the field. A little about the catching and throwing in softball (or baseball). In cricket, you basically catch or stop the ball with any arm, leg, or shoulder and throw with your throwing arm but in softball, you catch with your left hand which is heavily gloved and throw with your right. Vice versa for the southpaws. You have to put on the glove to see how huge it actually is; seems a bit too large to catch a ball. It is almost like playing street cricket in a tuxedo; too dressy for sports. But if you have seen the body armor in American football, you know that all American sports are heavily padded. Talk about being a man!
Ah! the game. Well, although we had tons of fun and cheered our solitary run we got our asses handed to us in a royal fashion. They piled on 18 runs in the first inning and six in the second. Time prevented smashing of any most-runs records as game was called in the third inning. We dropped catches galore, threw to the wrong bases, walked almost everyone on the batting side, saw balls sail above our heads, threw balls from the outfield only to land a few feet away, and any other possible thing you could to lose a softball game. Even the umpires were enjoying themselves.
But hey, this is our first softball game. We are meeting for practice this Sunday. Hopefully, we can reduce the margin of defeat a little.
by Patrix | on Saturday, June 2nd, 2007 at 11:27 am | 
Personal, Recommended, Sports, United States . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
June 2nd, 2007 at 2:24 pm reply
I am learning tennis this summer.. so far my aim had been to get the ball onto the other side of the net.. now I am working on landing it where I want it to. ..:)
BTW, a softball related wtf was a softball team in Shivaji Park. I know one friend of mine was in it.. not anymore.. ( not a friend any more.. :) dont know if the league’s still alive)
June 2nd, 2007 at 3:51 pm reply
Sqrl, tennis! Wah! We used to play that when I was in Atlanta…self-learnt of course. Had advanced to the level where we could serve successfully and the rally used to last for couple more shots.
I remember going once to play baseball at OLPS Chembur (my mom taught there) way back in 1984 so your Shivaji Park softball story isn’t surprising although can’t imagine Balmohan or King George (now CS) students playing softball.
June 2nd, 2007 at 5:24 pm reply
had to stop by to say same pinch! I played my first game in a similar team on wednesday…similar stories, but smaller margin of defeat.
June 2nd, 2007 at 5:50 pm reply
curiouscat, wow! either you seem to be a quick learner or you had a better team :)
June 12th, 2007 at 8:53 am reply
[...] guess I must update you on my softball progress. I missed the last Sunday’s practice and I was partly relieved because of the [...]