July 3, 2006, Herald Journal
Hardest thing I’ve tried to hit
After several summers off, I am back at it – playing softball that is.
But do I jump into the realm of slow pitch? Oh no. I don’t even find myself a good old modified team to play with.
Instead, I and a number of my old softball teammates and fellow Winsted Wildcat members have gotten back into fast-pitch.
We are sponsored by the Blue Note and play out at the Hollywood Sports Complex.
I figured, what the heck, I always loved fast-pitch back in the day when I played with Buck Uecker and the Waverly crew, so I thought it would be fun, and help my swing for baseball.
After playing the first couple of weeks during the season, I missed about a month of games due to baseball coaching responsibilities, but about three weeks ago, I began showing up regularly again.
It has been pretty fun, although I always dread giving up a night to play softball.
But, once I am there, it is a real good time.
That is, until this past Tuesday night, when we played a team that had a South American pitching.
This guy threw pretty much as hard as anyone I had ever faced – baseball included.
Take that into account with the fact that in fast-pitch, the pitcher starts only about 40 feet away, and by the time he is done hopping, is much closer – it can get scary.
Then, this guy that was throwing against us not only threw hard, but had a drop ball and a rise ball that moved so much it was ridiculous.
Despite how good this guy was, we lost just 2-1, and if not for a dropped pop-up in right, we easily could have won.
Of course, I had nothing really to do with our chances of winning since I struck out all three times I was up, hitting just one foul ball in the whole process.
At least I wasn’t as bad as my teammate Marc ‘Otis’ Kohler, who went down all four times.
I just wanted to thank Otis for making my night at the plate not look as bad.
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