Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
(Who? Go here.)
Teh youngest gel’s softball practices are on Tuesdays this spring. Ol’ Robbo serves as a kind of utility back-up coach this season, not having any official position but making himself useful where needed, both during practices and in games.
Anyhoo, this past Tuesday evening, we had as usual an intra-squad scrimmage. Because only nine or ten gels showed up for practice, this necessitated some coaches playing in the outfield. (At teh gel’s AAA level, the teaching emphasis is on infield execution, as the majority of hits among the 9-11 y.o. crowd tend not to travel far into the outfield.)
Playing center field, ol’ Robbo found himself squaring up against teh gel. She has really blossomed this spring on many different fronts, and in recent weeks has started to bear down much harder on her softball skills, which heretofore have been held hostage to what one might call the “Look – Squirrel!” frame of mind.
So, on a coach-pitched lob, teh gel smacked a long, hard shot into the left-center gap.
Ol’ Robbo is almost 50. He’s very much out of shape and is considerably out of practice when it comes to softball. Plus, he was still dressed in his work clothes. Nonetheless, because the ball hung up just enough, I managed to get a good jump and executed a nifty back-handed spear at full stretch as it came down.
Lord God forgive me, but I couldn’t help juuuuuust a little bit of taunting after I robbed teh gel of her hit.
I’m paying for it now with a set of lower back pains, but it was worth it. Right?
7 comments
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May 22, 2014 at 9:06 am
The Maximum Leader
Totally worth it.
May 22, 2014 at 9:24 am
NOVA Curmudgeon
But can you HIT like Span did the other evening?
May 22, 2014 at 4:25 pm
rbj1
Bob Gibson famously said that he wouldn’t let his kids win checkers. They had to earn it.
May 22, 2014 at 6:23 pm
captainned
I would have been in a real pickle in your game if I was playing on my gel’s team as she’s used my softball glove (after-work beer league back in the ’90s) for several years now. At 16 her hands are about the same size as mine so it works perfectly (assuming she could ever actually get the web flat on the ground).
At least with her it gets used.
May 22, 2014 at 9:15 pm
Robbo
Heh. I haven’t taken an at-bat since, oh, about 2002. Back in my own misspent yoot, the only reason I wasn’t picked last on P.E. teams was the general knowledge that I could pull or hit opposite field at will. Good times. Despite my firmness in offering gratuitous coaching advice to teh gels in the cages these days, I’m not sure how I myself would do against the machines and don’t care to find out.
May 24, 2014 at 9:17 am
captainned
Unfortunately I spent too much of my youth playing baseball so when it came to beer-league softball I was (and remain) a dead-pull hitter. I just can’t find the inner peace needed to wait on that incoming fly ball to drive it into right field (which in co-ed beer-league softball was the spot occupied by the clueless “look at me” girl).
May 24, 2014 at 10:27 pm
Robbo
Heh. Cap’n, your story reminds me that we had a paralegal at an old firm of mine named Valerie. She was (arguably) psychotic and (definitely) athletically untalented, yet she persisted in coming out for the firm’s softball team. She used to badger the team manager while the line-up was being announced, repeatedly muttering, “What about Valerie? What about Valerie?” Because of this, she became known as “What-about-Valerie?”
Worthless on the softball field, a danger to navigation at office parties….