I Still Have Those Cleats

I played softball for almost nine years, but I never was any good at it. My sister and I both played, but not only was she good, she was exceptional. I never hit a homerun in my entire softball-playing career, yet Amy was often purposefully walked by the opposing team because she could drive it far over the fence.

We are two years apart in age, which meant that every other year we were on the same team. The league was divided as such: 6-7 year olds, 8-9 year olds, 10-11 year olds and so on. And our teams were always pretty good. I remember one year when I played for the Ashland City Bankettes we won every game but one, I think, and we’d routinely beat our opponents by 30 points or more. That year we went to the state finals and came in fourth. But I certainly wasn’t the reason.

It’s kind of weird how I continued to suck for so long after so much practice. I was really scrawny when I was growing up, and clumsy. I was an eager batter with a weak swing. But once I was on base I was good to go. I was, at the very least, fast. I was always about the 7th or 8th batter on the lineup, and I played catcher. In a slowpitch league. I think everybody knows what that means.

Then all of the sudden our league became a fastpitch league. All of the counties surrounding us had been playing fastpitch for a couple of years before we finally made the switch.

Needless to say, catching for a fastpitch softball team is a little more, shall we say, challenging. For one thing, fastpitch allows base stealing. That meant my main objective was to never, ever drop the ball. Also, softballs flying at your face at 50-60 mph is frightening. You feel a little safer behind the mask and chest pate and shin guards, but you still go home with bruises on your palms.

But I loved stealing bases. Like I said, I was never a good batter, but fastpitch rules said we could bunt. I was a badass bunter. That ability, combined with my propensity to safely steal bases, meant I moved up in the batting order and saw a little more play time. I practiced hard when I began training as a fastpitch catcher, because it was rough to lose to those surrounding counties after winning for so long. My coach hauled in a pitching machine, cranked it up to 70 and stuck me in front of it. He made me run laps in all my catcher’s gear.

Despite all the hard work, we still sucked. Our competition was too far ahead of us.

I quit softball to be a cheerleader. I was a way better cheerleader than a softball player, but fear of a back handspring kept me from trying out for the squad my junior year, so I thought I’d go back to softball. I was too old by that time to go back to the city league, but my high school had an accomplished fastpitch softball team. I knew it would take some work, but I was incredibly fit after two year of competitive cheerleading, so I thought I could hang.

The first day of practice was tough, but I did okay. We went out on the field and ran drills, grounded balls, did some batting. The second day it rained, which is something I hadn’t planned on. I only brought my cleats to practice with me that day, but practice had been moved to the gym where only sneakers were allowed. Most of the girls trying out were also on the basketball team, so they had permanent lockers in their locker room which gave them access to tennis shoes. I wasn’t allowed on the gym floor in cleats, so I had to borrow a pair of sneakers from one of the basketball players. The only girl with an extra pair wore a size 9. I wear a size 6. But I had to make do.

They were hightops, all-leather basketball shoes, and they barely stayed on my feet at all. I had to tie the laces super tight around the ankles and wear two pairs of socks. The coaches showed up and divided us in to teams. Team one, my team, was to run one mile–18 laps–around the gym, and anyone that didn’t finsh got sent home. The team with the least number of people to successfully finish had to run an extra mile.

So I took off. And it was ridiculously hard. We used to run a mile every day before cheerleading practice, so it wasn’t the distance that got to me, it was the big ass clown shoes. Running in shoes three times too big makes things exponentially harder. It felt like I was climbing a mountain on skis. I had to lift my legs really high as not to trip. The shoes felt like heavy oversized bricks on my feet. But I made it. I ran the whole 18 laps in boat shoes.

But I forgot to tell you this part: I was sick. I hadn’t gone to school that day because I’d been puking. I tried to call the coach ahead of time and sit out, but she had no sympathy. I had to show up or I couldn’t play. I tried to eat, but couldn’t. I drank as much Gatorade as I could stomach and went in anyway.

The lack of food combined with the presence of a virus made me incredibly weak. After running my face was flushed crimson, and the skin around my mouth was pale white. I thought by lap 17 I was going to vomit or pass out, but I trucked on. I was dizzy and nearly in tears by lap 18. I made it ten yards or so from the finish line when I did it. I tripped over those big fucking shoes. I hit the gym floor with a thud and a squeak. My bare legs smacked against the waxed floor. I saw tiny lights, thousands of them in a sea of dark, but I heard one thing very clearly: "DRAG HER ACROSS!"

It was the coach. He was instructing my teammates to pull my limp, defeated body across the finish line. And so they did. I remember it so clearly. It was humiliating. The big shoes bouncing along as two girls skinned my knees trying to appease the coach.

But it was over. I sat there, a pile of failure in big ass shoes. We were told to move into the weight room while group two took their run. There was no way. I couldn’t even get off the floor. I crawled over to the female of the two coaches and asked if I could come back tomorrow. She said if I left then I couldn’t come back the next day.

I did the only thing I could do and slowly made my way out of the gym. Once safely in the hall I found an out of the way spot. I collapsed on the carpet and closed my eyes and tried not to hyperventilate or throw up.

I have no idea how long I’d been lying there when Mr. Angevine found me. He was my Latin and German teacher. He was surprised to find me in a red-faced, sweaty heap, and he offered a piece of candy to raise my blood sugar level. Mr. Angevine was a diabetic. He bought some water and took me to his classroom, and I rested at a desk until I could call my mom to come get me.

I say this because Channel 2 has a softball league that plays against the other stations in Nashville. And I wouldn’t mind playing; I think it would be fun. Besides, I’m sure it is slowpitch. Then I remember the Big Shoe Distaster of 1993 and I think otherwise. These people have cameras.