Forgetting How to Stop

Game Two:

This was a bad game. We got killed by the team I mentioned last week - the one that would "feel good to beat." I was right; they were kind of dickish to us. Which is worse - being a poor sport in a heated contest, or when you're blowing the opponent out of the water (or Warner #3)? I'm inclined to say the blowout - why trash talk a completely random coed softball team with whom you have no history? The history part matters, because when I play Joe in whiffleball, I will trash talk no matter how many fingers and toes I need to count my lead.

By the way, that sound was the gauntlet being thrown down.

Anyway, back to the softball game. I led off for Eat at Joe's (we have shirts now!) and swung at the first pitch. That's a little frustrating. Even more frustrating is that I'm really not making good contact at all right now. This hit went about 15 feet down the first base line. I took off down the line and would have been on first base with a single easily - except for two things:
1. I am an aggressive baserunning idiot.
2. I heard the pitcher (the old dad who needs to loosen up) yell "Let it go"!

When I heard that...I don't know what happened, all of a sudden I was a third of the way to second base and gunning hard for the weakest double of 2009. They threw me out, but it was close. I was probably out by a step. Still a dumb, dumb move. I figure I get one per season, so at least it's out of the way.

Besides getting thrown out needlessly and ruining a potential rally before it even started, there was another negative consequence of my mistake. Sometime between turning on the jets at first and sliding into second, I tweaked my right hamstring fairly badly. Not cool. I really don't get hurt - ever - playing games. I can think of once getting tackled by Ryan Cessna that put me out of a football game for a while, and...that's it. So I kept playing, but I could probably run during the game at about 60%. I was playing mostly left-center or center field, but unfortunately, the other team was hitting balls so far that not even full-strength Jeff could've caught them. My second atbat I grounded into a force play at second, and my last one I grounded back to the pitcher. Maybe another day I would beat it out, but not on half of a leg.

Eat at Joe's (0-1)
Game
H/AB AVG OBP SLG OPS R HR RBI
1/3 .333 .333 .333 .666 0 0 0
Season
H/AB AVG OBP SLG OPS R HR RBI
3/5 .600 .600 .600 1.200 2 0 0

Calli convinced me to take some painkiller at the euchre game later that night. By that point in the night, my leg was throbbing, and probably at 30%. I looked like an idiot walking down the street, I'm sure. The pills must have helped, though, because it's pretty close to normal again. That's nice, since we'll be walking all over Green Bay this week again.

No game next week for me; I'll be judging a battle of the bands in Mount Horeb. That should be interesting!