O Cecilia, You're Breaking My Heart

I love Baseball. I know, I should have asked you all to sit down before I gave away the big plot twist, but truthfully, if I were to start every conversation with those three words, I just don't know if it would properly state the affection I have for it. Everything about it is perfect to me, and it only gets better every day. It is the air I breathe and the food I eat...

And this Saturday, it told me that I needed to work harder if it was going to hang around me.

During the past year, I have idled my time away with other pursuits. Most of them were promising, but none held a candle to Baseball. About two months ago, I discovered this island had a softball league. And not just any softball league, but one of the most serious ones I've ever seen. We're talking uniforms that the pro's wear, customized with names on the back and non-sequential numbers sewn in. Well, we did not have any corporate sponsors, so I was tasked to put together team uniforms on a shoestring budget. They look great, but no one is going to confuse ours with the Yankees'.

We've played about seven games so far, and I haven't re-checked the results, but I'm fairly certain we're 0-7. None of them were close. Despite the team thumpings, I had always managed my own. Couple hits, stolen base here or there, couple routine plays and making sure playing time for everyone is well balanced. Nothing dazzling, but I knew that Baseball was coming home with me every night.

This weekend, I went home alone.

Truly tragic. My complete confidence was jarred. I was like a 14 year old boy asking a girl to dance for the first time. In the space of twenty minutes, I dropped a pop-fly, and struck out. Yikes. I've admitted many things here that I'm not too proud of. This is by far the most humiliating.

I struck out in modified pitch softball. It's not fast pitch, but it's not the big looping slow pitch. It's as fast as it takes to keep the pitch on a line from mound to plate, but not much faster. And I whiffed for strike three. We have guys on the team who had never played baseball before this league started, and I was the first (and currently only) one to strike out.

The crowd, which normally gives us a playful ribbing, went deadly silent. It was as though they were all afraid to say anything, or I would possibly snap and attack someone with the bat. And to follow it up by dropping a fly ball in left field the next half inning (which would have been the third out, but turned a 2-run inning into a 9-run inning), and now I feel as though Baseball and me are going through our second fight ever. For the record, the first was Baseball's fault. It went on strike during the playoffs and World Series back in '94. Thankfully, I proved that I could hold out longer and it came back to me for the beginning of the 95 season.

I hope this spat doesn't last long. Baseball's all I've got to get me through the days and weeks. If I lose that, I just don't know what I'll turn to. Maybe I should get the team together and practice, but how do you get a team together to practice that has already forfeited two of their games?

Word.