After visiting the University of Michigan last week, I swung through Minneapolis for a three-day “layover” and spent Easter with my parents. Monday night I drove by the old softball fields at Oakwood where I spent much of my summer evenings growing up, and I also had dinner with a former softball teammate at Snuffy’s Malt Shop. (Hi, Amy.) These occurrences, combined with the fact that I’ve been reading The Brother’s K, have inspired me to attempt to write down little vignettes based on my experiences on various ball fields growing up. This might become a series of entries. Or it might be a one time thing to get this out of my system. In any event…

The Catch
Back in 8th grade, I was the star first baseman of the Wayzata East Junior High softball team. Given that we didn’t win a game all season, that’s not saying much. We were pretty much the girls softball equivalent of The Bad News Bears. One of our outfielders repeatedly showed up to practice and games high on whatever magic pills she was storing in her locker and our sober outfielders were infamous for watching the fly balls soar over their heads, waiting until they landed to go and retrieve them.
Due to my own solid glove and the lack of initiative in our various deliquent right fielders, I pretty much took defensive claim over any foul pop-ups to the right side. In one memorable away game, we were playing on a muddy field that lacked all fences, save the backstop. We were in the field, and the current batter had one strike against her. On the next pitch, she swung and connected and I saw the ball soar high into the air right towards my right field foul territory.
Now, it’s worth noting that when I say the ball soared high, I mean that it pretty much went straight up and the fact that it traveled a significant horizontal distance was due do the large amount of time it spent travelling vertically. As soon as it left the bat, I focused on nothing but the ball and chased after it somewhere deep in foul territory. All I could see was the white dot flying against the blue sky, and thus I had no idea just how foul the ball was or how close I was coming to the giant mud puddle that had formed on the dirt path behind our visiting team bench.
Realizing that I was going to come a few steps short of actually reaching the ball, at the last second I desperately stuck my glove way out in front of me and dove onto my knees, right into the aforementioned mud puddle. Much to my amazement, the ball landed right in my glove. I raised it above my head to the cheers of my team. I could see my coach, the illustrious Mr. Lamphere, laughing and shaking his head in disbelief. Then I realized that I had run right past my team’s bench, off of the playing field entirely. And that’s when the umpire broke the bad news.
“The catch was out of bounds. No play. Foul ball – strike two.”
I was incredulous. I had just made the catch of my life, gotten myself covered in mud, and yet it didn’t count because I had run too far. My coach continued laughing and shrugged as I picked myself up and headed back to the infield, ball in hand.
On the next pitch, the batter straightened it out and sent a towering drive over our center fielder’s head. She crossed home plate before we even got the ball back to the infield.