Indoor Softball

I was driving back home from having dinner with my friend, thinking that I really wasn't in the mood to do any more literature searches for my paper.  The thought came to me that a visit to the gym for some exercise could be some fun. I stopped by the store to grab a couple of things and I text messaged my friends Laura and Marie to invite them to come with me to the gym.  I found out from Laura that they had both been to the gym earlier.  As I drove back from the store, my phone began to ring and I saw that it was Marie.  Lucky for me I was pulling into my driveway as she was calling, and low and behold she was at my house.  She told me that she was going to go play some indoor softball and she thought I might want to come.  I hemmed and hawed for a few minutes, thinking at this point I'd rather go inside watch a movie and go to bed early.  Marie convinced me to go.  We showed up where Marie's sister's family was already waiting.  The numbers were few, but we got a game going with five on five.  Now you might wonder how that is possible since softball fields are usually pretty big.  Well, the answer is that the outfield is not nearly as big as normal.  They have netting hung all around the field, including over the top of the field.  That means that pop flies can be tricky as the ball hits the net and is sent  right back down, not always at the angle you expected.  I don't think I've played softball for a number of years, and we went in cold with no warm up.  I managed to beam the pitcher in the back trying to throw a ball to first base from short stop.  I felt so terribly awful, embarrassed, and ready to walk off the field afterwards.  Well, that didn't happen, I continued to play, but I was a lot more hesitant when throwing the ball around.  I ran lots as our team got up to bat for long periods of time.  I managed to remember how to hit the ball, and started hitting some nice hard drives out to left field.  We didn't really keep score, but it was great exercise and a lot of fun.  I would definitely play indoor softball again.