Paperboys, Game 1

Oh man, my legs hurt.

My shoulder, too.

I’ll tell you why. Thursday was the lidlifter for the park district softball league I play in. An unfortunate side effect of getting older is that bodies tend to get sore more easily after strenuous physical activity. It’s a testament to my conditioning that I consider park-league softball strenuous physical activity.

Anyway, I am extra sore now, because employment obligations and the damned weather have conspired to keep the Paperboys from practicing before the season started. No batting practice, no infield practice, nothing. I hadn’t even thrown yet this spring.

So I get to Diamond 5 at Riverside Park, and I warm up with our centerfielder. I literally am standing 15 feet away to start. I’m tossing OK, so back up a bit and add some mustard. Now, I’m no doctor, but I don’t think whatever guts comprise the human shoulder should be rubbing together while throwing a softball. But whatever… there’s no pain, and eventually the rubbing (and its associated clicking noise) stops. The internal bleeding must have lubed up the joint.

We’re the visiting team, and our inning ends before I bat out of the No. 9 hole. My rust shows as our first baseman tosses out warmup grounders; my throws are a good five feet to the home-plate side of the bag. Eep. Luckily, I had no chances at the 6 in the first inning.

I finally come to bat leading off the third inning. Now remember, it had been eight-plus months since I’d swung a bat in anger, so what do I do? I jump on the first pitch, of course. Incredibly, I actually put a good swing on it, driving it over the head of the centerfielder. Ordinarily, with a shot like that it’s at least a triple. But the infield was in terrible shape after Wednesday night’s rain. I round first and start to slip in a muddy spot, so I do one of those numbers where you’re taking exagerrated strides and windmilling your arms to keep from face-planting. I save face, literally, and cruise in with a standup double.

The next batter grounds one to short, and I am so winded I don’t even move off the bag. One out. Our leadoff man (the centerfielder) comes up and shoots a grounder up the middle, so I am kind of obligated to run. The third-base coach waves me home, and I’m in without a throw. Yay. Jogging back to our bench, I feel like collapsing on the stands behind the backstop. That probably wouldn’t look to cool, so I manage to suck enough air to make a controlled collapse on the bench. I’m such a stud.

Well, that double was my only hit of the night. I turn over a “knuckler” in my next at-bat and nearly beat the throw from short. My third and last at-bat came with the bases loaded and two outs, and after taking a pitch and fouling off another (a good at-bat if there ever was one), I hit the ball on the screws again. Unfortunately, the centerfielder was standing in the path of my screaming liner. Jerk.

Defensively, I didn’t do too badly. Our centerfielder, apparently conscious of my arm woes, didn’t hit his cut-off man (that would be me) once, although he did have a nice peg at home to save a run. Maybe he had the right idea. I handled five of my six chances cleanly, the five being three 6-4 assists, a 3-6 putout and a popup. The sixth was my last chance, a grounder to my left. With two outs and a man on first, the easy play was the unassisted force at second. But I must have raised up for the bag a split-second too soon because the ball doinked off my glove. The unwritten rule is that there are no errors in park-league softball, but I was mad about that one.

And wouldn’t you know it, the next batter goes deep for a three-run dinger. All thanks to me. As it turns out, though, the error didn’t really matter. The homer made the score 12-4, and we went down in order the next inning to end the game.

For having done virtually no physical activity over the winter except hoisting beer glasses, I guess I can’t complain too much about the first game. My legs and shoulder sure are mad at me, though.