I drove back early from the 3 day clergy conference at DaySpring this evening to make it in time for my softball game. Over the weekend there was some emailing done among teammates - someone volunteered to bring bats, someone volunteered to be the captain, positions were identified and people agreed to show up tonight. I drove back from DaySpring dressed out and excited!

I arrived at the field. No one was there. Well, no one my age. Some high school girl's softball team was playing. I asked someone and they said try the next field over, down the street. SO, ten minutes before the first pitch I show up, get my jersey, and toss a few balls with a guy I met but promptly forgot his name. Turns out the whole team was made up of people who not only had never played together, but, by and large, had never met each other. Good times! We learned names as the innings progressed. Well, some of them.

We took the field first and had a mildly disastrous inning. The pitcher was working out how to pitch and the infield was getting acquainted with one another. We got up to bat down 5 runs.

And our bats answered. Quickly and severely. Before they got three outs on us we had driven in 7. Yours truly started off in fine fashion with an RBI triple and was greeted by high fives, cheers, and back slapping. We held the otehr team to two runs in the second inning, and then they didn't manage to score again. Our team, on the other hand, kept driving them in.

I'll just go ahead and say - we're awesome!

Final score of 19-7. I batted 2-2, with a 3B, a 2B, a walk. I know, I know - a walk in slow pitch! But hey, as the boys in LCA used to say, sometimes you gotta kiss your sister, too.

Our pitcher worked her style out and struck out several, and induced easy ground balls and fly outs the rest of the time. Our defense had some errors, but was mainly solid. I played first and did fine. Afterwards, to celebrate our victory, we all went out for some beers. And also to introduce ourselves to one another.

It was awesome, just what I needed. I'm going to say what I'm going to say next gently...and I've loved the softball teams I've played on the past seven years, both in undergrad and grad school - but it feels good to be on a solid looking team. I hope that doesn't hurt anyones feelings, cause it's not meant to. It was also just what I needed socially - lots of the players are in my age range and are cool folks. I am looking forward to next week already - we're gonna rock it!

-R