Stumbling Through Softball: A Personal Journey

I swear it’s a sickness. It’s either that or gravity has a bit of a crush on me, since I can never seem to stay upright and on my feet. Last summer during softball alone I had many semi-catastrophic occurrences involving loss of balance or coordination such as getting a cleat stuck in home plate and almost kneeing myself in the face and tripping in the indent in the batter's box while going after a bunt. These events, however, were by for not the worst that happened. The worst took place during the Presque Isle tournament, facing none other than the Presque Isle panthers.

It was our last game of pool play on the second day of the tournament, and the other team’s pitcher was a friend of mine so I was excited to go against her. It had been a long day so I wasn’t in the field, but my coach left me in the batting line up. A few innings in it was my turn to bat, so I jogged out on the field, calm and confident that I would do well. After a few pitches I ended up with two strikes on me and I was getting nervous about the outcome of my at bat. The next pitch came and I made solid contact, so on instinct I started my sprint towards first base.

“Foul ball!” Came the call from the umpire.
It registered in my head that I did not need to complete my journey to first base.

After that everything felt like it was in slow motion. The last thing I was was my first base coach as the ground reached out and pulled me down face first. For a second I contemplated not even getting up. I was utterly humiliated. But I did. And when I did, I absolutely died laughing. I stood up after the initial shock and was greeted with a chorus of ‘Are you okay?!’’s. After reassuring them all that I was fine I trotted back over to the batter’s box, still laughing, and got ready to hit again. I fouled off another pitch and finally regained a shred of composure. Thwack. The the ball sailed deep into center field and over the center fielder's head. I made it to second but was stranded by my teammates, and from there I headed back to the

dugout.
I was greeted by my teammate, Amanda, who gave me a high five and shouted for the whole world to hear, “Dude that was so funny I almost peed!”.
Looking back now it's just a funny thing to think about and joke with my teammates about, but I was absolutely mortified at the time. This will definitely stick in my memory for a while just because of the sheer humiliation that I felt and the fact that this singular moment sums me up as a person pretty well.