Lessons from a winless recreational softball season

The Observer softball team exited Fruitville Park’s softball field No. 2 on Sunday the same way we had all season: In defeat.

I don’t say this in shame. We knew when we signed up to play in SoCo Club Sports’ Sunday league that winning would be a tall task. The majority of the team members had never played softball before, and those who had, myself included, had last played two presidents ago.

It started, uh, bad, with a 32-0 loss, and it is here I must remind you we were playing softball, where each score counts for a single run, and not, say, football. While the pitching and defense would improve, that zero would haunt us for a bit. In fact, it took us until our fifth game to score a run, when we scored five in what was easily our best game of the year (we still lost 17-5).

But we persevered, and even though we remained winless, there were some lessons learned I think everyone will carry with them through the rest of their softball-less lives, because let’s be honest, I’m never going to get them to play with me again.

I learned that SoCo Club Sports takes its rules seriously. Before the season, the team purchased a brand new bat — the DeMarini Dinger Slinger, to be exact. I can neither confirm nor deny that I bought it solely for its name, but either way, the thing also carried some serious heft and, thus, power. Things were going great on the bat front until game seven of our season, when SoCo officials did a bat check for the first time all year and discovered the bat was not supported by the American Softball Association, and SoCo falls under its jurisdiction. Despite being approved by every other softball league, the bat was banned. We were forced to borrow our opponents’ bats for two games before finding an old, approved one to use.

Now, I’m not trying to call SoCo out for banning the bat. It’s the league rule, and the league has every right to enforce it. What I am saying is I miss the Dinger Slinger greatly, and I encourage everyone to try saying it out loud, just for fun.

I learned that the bat comes back much easier than the glove, as least for me. At the plate, I was able to recapture much of my former timing and heat-seeking swing, old bat or new. Playing the field was a chore, with my dilapidated body (I’m 23) struggling to get all the way down for ground balls or stretch for balls hit down the foul line. As a team, our defense improved much more than our hitting. I’m not sure why this contrast existed, but I found it interesting.

I learned that coaching is ever more difficult than playing. Forget about running drills in practice; finding a time when everyone could even show up was an exercise in futility. Journalists don’t exactly work 9 to 5. When we did practice, my tips on hitting more or less boiled down to “Keep your eye on the ball,” which is a fancier way of saying “try harder.” We did run some pickle drills, which were the highlight of the whole thing for me personally. I felt like I failed my teammates in my overall instruction, but when I asked a few of them yesterday, Black Tie reporter Kayleigh Omang said I was “encouraging” and Longboat Observer community editor Katie Johns called my leadership style “determined and positive.” I then asked them to roast me and none of them would do it. That’s something, I guess, because …

I learned that none of the above matters as much as us enjoying making fools of ourselves. After every game, we would sit for an hour at the park’s picnic tables and drain the last of our game day beers. We’d talk about who the game’s MVP was, recap any crazy plays and, like any self-respecting team, complain about the myriad calls that went against us.

We were the Bad News Bears of the SoCo rec league, except we never got good, and that’s OK. I love my teammates more than ever, and I hope you’ll still respect us as reporters despite our failings on the field. I’d also encourage each of you to join a league. Softball is a challenging sport to play, but it's the stumbles that bring people together, and I suspect you’ll have more fun than you think you will.

Just make sure to use an ASA bat. Once you go Dinger Slinger, there’s no going back.