This is Why They Play the Games

Our recreational softball team is a true recreational team, made up primarily of 30- and 40-somethings who aren't exactly in their physical prime. We play because we love to play the game. This is our second season together, and we've discovered that only about half the teams in the league are recreational. The others are out to win. That causes us a considerable amount of frustration when those teams have different goals and talent levels than we do, but I suppose that's just part of softball life.

Last year, we finished with a 1-7-1 record, good for seventh place out of seven teams. Our one win was by five runs against another truly recreational team, and then in the rematch, they pounded us by about 20 runs. We put up a spirited fight in the first round of the tournament against our arch-rivals, but we came up a little short.

This year, we had only won one game up until this week. The team we beat was the same team we beat last year. We had just gone through a three-week-long rough patch where we played against (and lost to) the three best teams in the league. We had a game scheduled last week against the worst team in the league, but it was rained out, and it doesn't appear as though it will be made up. So our game this week was against the team that throttled us in the first week of the season, 13-3. They were 4-2, to our 1-5 record. To make matters worse, our opponent had just beaten the last undefeated team in the league. It seemed overwhelmingly likely that we'd finish the season with just one win again, which was particularly frustrating because we are actually a much better team this year. We haven't been getting blown out by 30 runs in 3 innings in every game, as we did on a regular basis last year. We've been losing fairly close games, hanging in there with the best teams until time expired.

So on Wednesday night, we showed up to take our lumps. As usual, our opponents were much younger and more athletic than we are. We joked with them before the game about showing us some mercy and spotting us 20 runs before the game even started, just to keep things interesting for about 10 minutes.

We batted first and put up 4 runs on the scoreboard. Already an improvement over our first game against these guys! But in the bottom of the first inning, they responded with 7 runs. Here we go again, we all thought. The beginning of the end.

I'm not sure what happened next, but I'm pretty sure we were all possessed by aliens or something. We absolutely unloaded on our opponents in the second inning. Several of us batted twice in the inning, and hits and runs piled up faster than losses normally pile up on us. Then we played defense like we've never played defense before. We had none of our trademarked collosally boneheaded errors that normally doom us. We had a handful of minor errors, but none that led to excessive hemmoraging. Everyone kept their spirits up. Everyone played hard. Everything broke our way. Heck, we even had our favorite umpire for this game. Our planets were in alignment.

As a general rule, I don't want to know the score as we play. Obviously, I get a general sense of how a game is going, but I don't like knowing the score because I don't want to get all tensed up if the score is close, nor do I want to slack off if we're up by several runs and let the other team come back. So I knew that we were hanging in there with our opponents, but I didn't know the score. At one point late in the game, Chuck violated my rule and told me the score was 18-11. Not too bad, I thought. We're only down by 7, and we played these guys well.

What I didn't find out until after the game was that we were the ones with 18 runs at that point, not them.

We scored a few more runs in the top of the inning, gave up a couple in the bottom of the inning, and then I saw Chuck talking to the umpire at the end of the inning. I couldn't hear what Chuck was saying, but after their conversation, Chuck threw his glove into the dugout. I figured we must be down by a couple of runs, and the umpire is calling time, thus frustrating Chuck because we didn't get one more chance to win. Then as we approached the other team for the usual post-game sportsmanship-oriented high-fives, I heard Chuck's wife yell from the stands, "Good job, guys! You won!"

WHAT?!

I was stunned, and pretty confused, as we exchanged kind words with the other team. By the time I got back to the dugout, my teammates were jumping up and down with glee. The final score was Us 23, Them 13. The game hadn't been called because time ran out. The game was called because of the mercy rule.

Chuck was roaring with excitement that our two wins this season makes him the "better coach" of the two of us, since I only coached us to one win last season. The jubilation and, to some degree, shock poured out of the dugout as if we had just won Game 7 of the World Series. If we had had a cooler full of Gatorade, it would have been dumped over Chuck's head. I'm sure our opponents thought we were being obnoxious jerks and rubbing it in. Hell, it was just a regular season game.

But to us, it was much much more. We had won a game for only the third time in two seasons. We had beaten a really good team. We had 10-runned them, in fact. Our much improved team had finally put it all together and played up to our potential. As I visited briefly with my parents after the game, I couldn't wipe the ear-to-ear smile off of my face or get the trembling out of my voice. About half of our team went directly to Chuck's house for celebratory beers. The atmosphere was raucous. We gleefully rehashed the entire game in minute detail amongst ourselves for hours. Two days later, I'm still grinning.

We begin tournament play next Wednesday, and we'll be the sixth-seeded team out of eight. We assume we'll be playing against the third-seeded team, so we'll be heavy underdogs again. And depending on how the standings shake out, that third-seeded team could be the same opponent we just beat. If it is, they'll probably want a little revenge. And if they pound us next week, that's okay. Because we turned a corner Wednesday night, and it was oh so sweet. We have hope now. We know we can do it. We're no longer the hapless doormats of the league.

Maybe next year we can win three or four games!