Date: Fri 04-Aug-1995

Publication: Bee

Author: KIMH

Illustration: I

Quick Words:

Softball-Column-Harmon

Full Text:

Kim Harmon/On Sports

Another Game, Another Headache

Hey, it looked easy. You stand up at the plate. Some guys lobs a ball in at

you nice and slow. You whack it somewhere. And you run around the bases.

How hard could that be?

That's basically what I was thinking when I decided, back in May, that I

wanted to play slo-pitch softball instead of golf.

I had covered slo-pitch for years in Watertown and always thought I could

play, but the leagues there weren't as tough or as serious and everyone seemed

to be having fun.

And it seemed simple. Step up to the plate, hit, and then run. Most of the

slo-pitch I saw, it came down to fly balls. Were they long enough to be

homers. Were they in the gaps? Or can they be caught?

I had the opportunity to play with the Gervais Brothers here in Newtown and I

took it, thinking it was going to at least be easier than hitting a little

white ball into a small, round hole.

Did I have a clue, though? No. Despite watching it and covering it and taking

pictures of it for years, I never played organized softball in my life. I

haven't fielded more than a dozen fly balls in my life or swung the bat more

than 20 times and all that during barbecue ball in someone's back yard.

But, really, I thought, how hard could it be?

Well . . .

But - this was a couple months ago - I was sick of golf. When I first started

playing that game, I stunk - but I was having fun. Over the years I progressed

to the point where, yes, I still stunk, but I was also having a lot less fun.

So when May rolled around and it was time to pull the clubs out of the

cobwebbed corner of my garage, I bolted like a deer being stalked by a

mountain lion. I all but begged Tom Wyatt for a spot on his team, as if he

would be hiding me from my golf clubs.

Once I realized no one could force me to play golf, I relaxed, thinking the

rest of the summer was going to be a stroll through the (Treadwell or

Dickinson) park.

Ha.

Little did I realize how difficult this softball thing was really going to be

. . . especially down here, for me, a guy with no power and painfully little

experience. Some guys here have been playing for years and some guys simply

have the instincts for the game, but for those fresh-faced, stupid rookies

like me, who have to learn it all, this game - as easy as it might look - can

be tough.

And it's tougher still in the 'A' Division, where most people are flat out

good. I admit, I was intimidated. In the first game balls were flying over the

fences at Dickinson. So in my first at-bat - late in the game - I was so

nervous, I must have been visibly shaking.

I struck out.

In my second at bat, the next game, I lined out softly to left-center. My

third at bat I grounded to second base.

Then I started thinking - am I ever going to get a hit? And - do I have time

to make the back nine at Patton Brook?

But I got a hit the next time up, my fourth at-bat of the season, and then got

11 more hits the next 26 times up. Ever since I started 0-for-3 I've batted

.444 - not bad, I think, but I'm not really hitting. I'm just swinging and

hoping the ball goes somewhere where there ain't no fielders.

Yeah, I've been able to go to right field a couple of times, but I am a long

way from actually doing something with the softball and a long way from

knowing what to do with it in different situations.

Right now I'm just swinging.

And running. That's one of the things - running the bases - that I thought I'd

know how to do. But after getting doubled off first once and not advancing

that extra base a couple times when I should have, I know now that I barely

have a clue.

If you don't have the instincts or haven't ever played, there's too darn much

to think about. People probably sit up on the hill behind the Treadwell Park

field and think this is easy, but it's not. It's tough.

Slo-pitch softball at this level, in this league, is a lot more than

beer-league buffoonery.

It's a good league, a lot of fun, and I've spent a enough time around enough

good players that I'm starting to learn what this game is all about.

I won't hit any homers, but maybe the next triple I get won't be a mistake.