Recently, at a softball game, I noticed just about every athlete has her own bat worth at least 300 dollars and I did math in public to figure out how much that would be between the teams’ tow dugouts.
It would be a minimum $7,200 for two 12-player rosters.
Wow.
When most of us were kids, our coaches carried a bat bag, and maybe there would be one-half dozen bats, and whatever else your coach carried in that duffle bag. Those bats were our arsenal.
I heard a comedian talk about this too as it related to his son’s travel baseball experience. He said each kid (in a preadolescent travel team) had his own bat, and in his words, “…so they could strike out looking while holding a 300-dollar bat.”
I laughed hard because I’ve seen teams with almost $4,000 in hitting artillery muster three hits.
I was a terrible hitter as a kid, but a particularly good fielder. I was called the designated out. This was a time when we did not have designated hitters, so if you played a position in the field, you also went to bat. In this day and age, I would have probably been augmented with a designated hitter.
I could cover a lot of ground in center field, but I could not hit much of anything. I could also remember where each opposing batter hit their ball among precious at bats. People would audibly sigh when I approached the play.
I, even in this day and age, would not deserve my own 300-dollar bat.
I lost interest in baseball in junior high, and my knowledge of the game aside from player stats diminished greatly. I eventually played slow-pitch men’s and co-ed softball when I was 16. I still didn’t own an expensive bat. I just used what the manager/coach carried in his bat bag.
At 16, I could cover even more ground, but in the men’s leagues where I played, I was mostly used as a wild-card runner, a role two of the leagues I played in had where I could be used once per inning to fill in for someone who successfully reached base.
We had a 60-year-old pitcher on one of my teams… great on the mound but immobile. When he pitched, I was usually not on the lineup card for a field position so I could run for him.
I actually liked the role. I was a smart baserunner, and as an old high school friend reminded me in a Facebook post several years ago, “What are you talking about? You could run like the wind.”
The context was something to do with shoes or something like that.
He recalled how easy I made preseason football’s conditioning scaled 400- and 800-meter runs look, and how I made him winded just watching me.
I was useful in my wild card runner role, and the postgame conversation among a group of mostly salesmen and teachers was pretty interesting. I preferred the company of adults over kids my age once I hit eighth grade anyway.
I was probably about one of a handful of kids my age in the village where I lived who did not get high on a regular basis, so the adults were better company.
I played college intramurals. I was on the mound in slow-pitch action because my roommates and their friends who comprised the rest of the team were so talented that I had no business being in that outfield.
I played some intramural Air Force softball, too, but I decided to hang up the cleats at the ripe old age of 23 (1987). I immersed myself in volleyball in college and in the Air Force, and I was tired of rainouts and the June bugs that would bite me while I loitered in the outfield in my first base in Rome, New York.
Loitering?
Yes.
Softball began to feel like loitering. I would rather work late in my duty station or office solving a problem, run, lift weights, or play volleyball in the sand or on the hardwood.
The closest I come to any softball action these days is behind the mic at a high school softball game. I’m fine with this.
I enjoy watching other people play ball on the diamond while I stay occupied behind the mic now and then, but my diamond days have been over for decades.