Finally, a post that isn’t about dunkball!
For the past 4 years, I have been a part of a softball team. It all started when our friend Jim invited us to play softball with him. Jim is a phenomenal athlete. He’s one of those guys that plays shortstop to near perfection, and he hits a home run at almost every at bat. In fact, it shocks you if the ball doesn’t go over the fence.
Despite his talents, his team “the Wilderbeasts” didn’t live up to expectations, well… because the rest of us couldn’t play. I never played little league baseball as a child, so I never grasped the fundamentals of throwing, batting, and fielding. And it’s safe to say that several of our teammates were not up to par with our captain.
Needless to say, the next season, we were not invited back to play by our star player. If I were in his shoes, and my team stunk because my buddies sucked at softball, I would have done the exact same thing. It’s the same reason my roommate Rhett has never wanted me on any of his soccer teams in the past six years.
But all of us castoffs liked playing softball and we had a good time: win or lose. So the following season, we banded together to form our own terrible team and even chose an appropriate label: Jim’s Orphans.
The next three seasons we were absolutely atrocious. Our average record was about 2 wins and 12 losses. We constantly lost by 10 or more runs. But we never lost the competitive spirit and savored every rare victory we got, and had fun no matter what.
We were the only team to bring a boom box into our dugout and play batter music for each player at every at-bat (thanks, Jon). Our fans would come out and support us, cheering loudly even through all the losses (thanks Ashley, Febee, Jaime, Kristi, Annie, Laure, Stephanie, Anna, Bekah, and all the newcomers this season).
Last fall, we played through another brutal season of embarrassing losses, but the team never complained internally, and we actually ended the note on a victory I personally guaranteed.
This spring the entire team was coming back with only one change, we lost our friend Matt, and brought in a wildcard: Maxim. We had been looking for a new shortstop during the entire winter with no luck. A week before the season, we still had not found anyone. The Sunday before our first game, we invited Maxim, who is our centerfielder’s brother. He said he would play, but nobody had seen him play, and he admitted to not playing in nearly a decade.
Two days before our first game we learned that our star player Jim, the superstud shortstop who we named our team after, could play for us. We had already verbally committed to Maxim (who we had never seen play) which led us to a small conundrum: add the star player, or stick to our word.
Needless to say that Maxim played in all but two games (coincidentally, our only two losses) and we finished the season 12-2 (12-0 when Maxim played). He led the team in batting average, always got his glove in the dirt and played excellent defense, and last Thursday, we collected our first ever first-place trophy with championship t-shirts.
I dunno if we finally gelled after playing four years together, or if the competition got worse, or if our new bat allow us to hit it out of the infield, or because our defense really stepped up, or Maxim was just that magical of a missing piece, but we got it done, son!
Needless to say, it’s been a good trophy month. First: Dunkball, my favorite summer pastime, and now: softball, my second favorite pastime.
Go Orphans!
Oh, and we got an extra t-shirt that we will give to Jim (since his new team hasn’t gotten one….yet, jk). We still have a great relationship with him, and he even plays for us when we are short a player and we couldn’t have one the trophy if he had not hit a game-winning grand slam against the second best team three weeks ago.
This is for all of Jim’s Orphans:
1B Johnny
2B Scott
SS Maxim
3B Mark
LF Cyrus
R Abel
CF Josh
RF Ryan
C Jon
P Joe
Plus the boombox, and the FANS!
