Bloodsport AKA The Club Softball Tournament

Bodies lay littered about a battlefield of mangled rawhide and clinging dust. One team stands alone, stolid, proud, victorious. They scornfully look over their slain opponents thinking "who are these poor folk who dare challenge titans?" The team moves as if with a single mind, softball strategy and situations buzzing constantly in their ears. As their cleats leave the field they recognize the sound of victory trumpets and view the throngs of supporters surging against the fence for just one touch, one taste of the glory that was had. And then my team steps off the bus and realizes that we are way out of our league.
This wasn't seriously how the competition went, but it may as well have. Long story short, we got annihilated in the first round, but that by no means means that we didn't have any fun. Here's a picture of our team, post loss.

See how happy we are!?

We started practicing as a team about 2 days before the actual competition, so that may have been the first strike against us. Actually the first strike was that about only 3% of our team had ever played baseball before, but I initially thought that would add to the dark horse mystique of our team. It turns out it didn't.

Our practices were pretty unorthodox and people would routinely nearly get hit in the face by errant balls. Our one ace-in-the-hole was our pitcher, a girl named Erin who had apparently played "14 years of fast pitch softball." Her pitches were fast, that was a very true statement. Yet what her speed gained us, her accuracy stole, broke, yelled at, humiliated in front of our best friends and then ignited. Outside of softball she's a very nice girl, but if her attitude had been a little better about her pitching, then I probably would be more apt to cut her some slack. Yet whenever an errant pitch would whizz into a crowd of cowering Japanese school girls, it was somehow either: The catcher's fault, the type of ball we were playing with, the texture of the field, a worm sneezing, or Hitler. So that did not make our path to the championships the easiest one possible.

I've been bashing our team this whole time, but seriously we weren't all that bad. We had an amazing time practicing and we definitely had some good fielding going by the time game time rolled around. The actual tournament was played in a single elimination format, with about 32 teams playing. Every round lasted a half hour and the team with the winning score at the end of that time would move on. We, of course, had the amazing luck of getting an easy first round game against the entire NUFS boys and girls Varsity Baseball team. So we had that going for us, which was nice.

We got to bat first, and after two singles, a double play grounder by yours truly, and a pop out, the inning was over. Then came the real carnage. A rough estimate would be that about 14 batters were walked in this inning, so it made the other team's task of getting runs easier than say, taking candy from an unborn fetus. We were eventually let out of that inning after ten runs were scored on us, and went up to bat again. This time we got about two runs (gimmes) but were out fairly quickly. The next inning we subbed in a new ace and got out of the inning with two slow grounders thrown to first and a pop fly to the outfield. In the last inning we were at bat with about 5 minutes left. I was the first batter and knowing that we were fighting a close one, I decided to belt a home run off of the third pitch. You know, no biggie. But seriously all I did was close my eyes and swing with all my might. All I could think, while watching that ball fly into the sky, was of a young boy by the name of Robbie Lautensack exclaiming "it's like a dream!" So I added another run to our score with that bomb and two of my teammates, Pat and Andy added 2 more runs with some fancy hitting. In the end we just barely lost, the score being Us-5, Them-10. It was a match for the ages.

One last thing, that was most definitely my favorite part of the whole experience. This thing was the name of our team. If you looked closely at the shirts you could probably read out the name. But in case you haven't, it reads "My Dixie Wrecked." Now if you can tell me that hearing about 200 different japanese people say "My dixie wrecked?" in an inquisitive japanese accent wouldn't make your day, then you, sir or madam, would be a damned lyer!

Alright, sorry about the length and I hope you enjoyed reading. I'll be back again with another update around this time again next week so stay posted for the madness.