It feels like only yesterday that I wrote my 500th post on this blog. It seems quite surreal that I now find myself sitting down to work on this one, post number 1,000. To commemorate the occasion, I thought I’d focus on a play from my softball-playing days that I look back on with pride and fondness.
During the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, I played for a competitive softball team called the Drifters. We were a pretty solid team, and with the exception of a few stints in the outfield or at third base, I spent most of the summer playing shortstop.
I honestly cannot recall where we were playing or who we were playing against, nor can I recall what inning we were in, but I do remember that this particular memory happened around mid-summer and that it was after dark. The artificial lighting illuminated the field so completely that it might as well have been noon, and bugs buzzed around the infield as though they wanted to be a part of the game, too.
We were on defense, with me at shortstop, and we had one out in the inning with a runner on first. The girl at the plate slapped a groundball to second base, and everything that happened from there was essentially the product of hundreds of repetitions during practices.
With a ball hit to the right side of the field, I automatically moved to my left to cover second base. Our second baseman fielded the ball cleanly behind the baseline and tossed it to me as the runner who had been on first came barreling towards me. I caught the ball and pivoted.
All I can remember seeing was the front of the baserunner’s jersey. I couldn’t see our first baseman, but I also knew that I didn’t have time to look for her. With the runner coming straight at me and not bothering to slide, I dropped my throwing motion to a sidearm and fired as hard as I could around the runner, making my best guess at first base without being able to locate it visually. The baserunner came into second base, still standing.
Next thing I knew, I heard cheering and my teammates were running past me towards the dugout. I blinked, confused. Holy crap, did we get her? I thought wildly. I jogged towards the dugout, where our coach greeted me with a huge smile and a high five. I sat down on the bench, still too stunned to believe it.
We had turned a 4-6-3 double play, and I hadn’t even realized it. It was the first (and only) double play of that sort that I’d ever turned.
Watching Major League Baseball on television, an infield double play like that appears to be one of the most routine plays out there. You don’t realize just how difficult it is to pull off until you’re out on the field trying to do it yourself. Every piece of it has to go right: the ball has to be fielded cleanly, thrown cleanly, and caught cleanly, and it all has to be done with rapid fire precision. The tiniest misplay or hesitation can blow the entire play. At the amateur level, the only double plays you ever really see are the result of unlucky line drives or miscues by baserunners. That play we turned with the Drifters was the only one of that sort that I’ve ever seen at that level, and I didn’t even get to see the end of it. But I sure was glad to be a part of it.