Intramural Softball 2011

Trafton B.

April 17, 2011 - 5:48 PM

Springtime has finally arrived (sort of - partly cloudy weather is springtime in Oregon) and that means that Intramural Softball season is once again underway. One last chance to win that coveted intramural champion t-shirt, two if you count both our men's and coed softball teams. I don't know why, but I have a good feeling about this season. 

I've pretty mch been looking forward to softball season since the final game of last year. Yesterday, I headed to the batting cages with some teammates to get some swings in. Earlier today I picked up a new pair of cleats, and by ‘new' I mean I bought a ‘new' pair of ‘used' cleats from Play-it-Again Sports, where all prices are perfect for a college budget. We headed to the field early today to warm up. Finally, the game started. I was super excited. First pitch of the game leaves my hand and *BOOM!!* HOMERUN. Not a good start to the season. It was all downhill from there.

I don't think I've ever been on a team that was beat in such a horrendously painful way. First pitch of the game was a homerun, the first of many. Batter after batter came to the plate and roped balls to every part of the yard. We made a few outs between homeruns and ground rule doubles, but the outs were few and far between. It's touch to tell what part of our game looked worse, offense or defense. The gigantic mudslide in right field didn't help our cause either. Steven ended up with a sweet battle stain on his back. Mud went everywhere. 

Our opponents scored ten runs in the second inning alone, and they would have scored plenty more if there weren't a 10-run limit per inning. I finally had to pull myself from the mound after the third inning. Elliot had much more success in his relief appearance, but some of their players started batting switch so I'm pretty sure they stopped caring after the first two innings. Either way my ERA is through the roof. 

There's a mercy rule if any team is down by 15 runs after four innings, and we obviously were on the wrong end of that situation. The referee asked us after the second inning (when we were already down 22-0) if we wanted to keep playing. My response was, "Well, I haven't even gotten to bat yet so, yeah, I think we're going to keep playing." I mean, c'mon, we're already out there. Might as well play, right? Every team makes the playoffs anyways, and we needed a little practice.

The game trudged on. My first swing of the game I popped out to the catcher, who wasn't even wearing a glove. We ended up scoring a few runs in the end. Not many, but a few. The final score ended up being 30-4. Yikes!

I still had a great time. It was good to be back on the field and we had some good laughs. After the game I told their coach we'd see them in the championship game, which he and the refs got a chuckle out of. Don't get me wrong, I don't like losing, but when the other team has more homeruns in the first inning than you have runs in the entire game, you have to laugh about it.

It's a long season, and hopefully we won't run into any beat downs like this one. One thing is for sure though. If we're going to win that t-shirt, it's probably not going to be with our men's team. Hopefully our coed team does a little better next Friday.