Seventh Inning Stretch

Buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks. Fire up the cell phone cameras.  Pass the Ozarka water bottles and snarf a quick glug of Gatorade. Somebody find the g__d___ lineup and get it posted before we have a delay-of-game. Oh, and has anybody seen our catcher?  Just pulled in? Good. The mighty Law Dogs are back, and springtime in Dallas will never be the same.

That's right, kids.  It's time once again for Law Firm Softball.

Now, let it be known that I'm not what you would call exactly athletic.  Heck, you've seen my pictures; I'm on the hefty side.  I swim, but you don't need to be athletic to swim (though it helps, and it also helps to be tall. I am not tall). I have, however, pretty much always exercised. Mostly swimming when I was a kid, and when I wasn't swimming I was playing soccer, and when I wasn't playing soccer, there was aerobics, gymnastics, ice skating, snow skiing, water skiing and all manner of wacky stuff.  When I grew up it was swimming again, a gym membership, karate, and my dad and I were locked in a battle-to-the-death raquetball game that has never really ended. In fact, I blame this whole exercise thing on my dad.  It's always been really important to him, and that rubbed off on me. It's made me despicably healthy, even if it never made me skinny.

(In fact, when the trainee medical assistants at my doctor's office take my blood pressure for the first time, they invariably think the machine is broken.  Bless their sweet ignorant hearts.)

For Law Firm Softball, though, you don't have to be athletic. You just have to be breathing.  Being female is good, too, because there's a minimum requirement for number of women on a team.  It's nice if you can walk up to the plate and swing the bat.  Doesn't matter what you swing the bat at, either, as long as you miss if you're aiming for the umpire. Connecting with the ball is good, and being able to run to first base is an extra bonus, but really.  You breathe, you're in.

Last night the Dogs posted a respectable 11-7 loss to the Desperadoes. I say respectable because I think last season it took us four games to score our first run. 11-7 is practically World Series caliber.  I even had a couple of standout moments, or stand-up moments, or failure to, or something or other.

Both times I made it to the plate, I hit the ball.  That's pretty good for a myopic paralegal who didn't have her glasses on (afraid of breaking them, and I think it's a justifiable fear).  The first time, I had something happen that I'm pretty sure I've never before seen outside of a cartoon.  I started running to first base.  Well, my feet started running to first base, anyway.  The rest of me, like a cartoon, stayed at home plate.  I must have looked a little like Wile E. Coyote as he ran off a cliff into space and hovered there, kind of like the world's ugliest hummingbird.

Anyway, the rest of me snapped forward to catch up with my feet and the next thing I knew, I was on the ground. I think I had time to yell a swear word or two.  I landed on my left side, rolled over on my back, kept on rolling onto my right side, pushed myself up to my feet and ran for first base again.  While I was executing my little barrel roll, the guy throwing to first base had missed, and everybody in the dugout was yelling, "Go! Go! Go!" So onward I scrambled, but unfortunately the guy recovered the ball and tagged me out.

My second time up wasn't nearly as dramatic.  Popped a fly. Someone caught it.  Oh well. But I didn't fall down!

I was also catching, while all this was going on.  Catching is kind of like serving as a human punching bag, while executing a certain amount of skill. It matters not how you stop the ball as long as you stop it.  I caught it mainly with my ankles.  Sometimes my chest. Once my shoulder and, oh yeah, a few times with the actual glove. I'fact there was a pop fly that I ran like heck to catch.  I felt it land in my glove.  I repeat, it was in my glove.  Then it bounced out of my glove and rolled away. But it was there for a second.  

So, I dunno.  Are the Law Dogs looking at a winning (er) season? Might Jen catch a pop fly, or at least make it to first base?  And with whom?  Just kidding, Joan.  Stay tuned, it's bound to get interesting.