After graduating from high school, a group of us decided to play in an organized softball league. Our choice at that time was down to church league softball. While we played and did OK, which I’ll talk about later, the extracurricular activities were more interesting. It’s later on in the post.

Our team was part of of the same group who lost almost every game in church league basketball, mostly because we were a bunch of white guys thinking we could play. There were some people who resembled athletes on this team. My roommate George and I both played tennis for our colleges, but that didn’t qualify us as good softball players. We had a couple of players who were little league stars, but as a group we weren’t that good.

Before I get started, this is a good lead in to the story.

We didn’t have a fistfight, at least on our team, but it did happen, between two other teams, both of which we played. A lot of other growing up stuff did happen though.

We were in that stage of just being out of high school, but growing up late and were starting to experiment with life. We also weren’t the star players on the baseball team either.

I guess we started out serious. We had just enough people for a team, All Saints Episcopal (we would be anything but Saints). I don’t remember if we had a team name, but it wouldn’t have been the Yankees. Misfit’s would have been more accurate. If anyone bailed, we’d have to forfeit. It was close some days whether enough guys would show up, but we managed to play the season. Of the nine guys, I think we had 4 that who actually played organized baseball. They put up with the lack of skills by the rest of us.

We picked positions and somehow I got 3rd base, far too close to home and a position I’d never played before. I’m pretty sure I was the kid in right field in my one year foray in little league at 7 years old. After a few practices, we thought we were ready to play and tear up the league. I think we believed the same thing in the basketball failure a few years earlier when we won 1 game all season.

In the first game, damn near the first batter of the year, a hard grounder was hit right to me. I was as shocked as anyone when I fielded it. I turned and fired a throw to the first baseman about 5 feet above his head. Since this was over 40 years ago now, I can’t remember whether we won or not. I’m pretty sure we lost as we did a lot of that.

In a subsequent game, another batter hit a line shot and I stuck my glove up and actually caught it. I was as surprised as anyone on the field, but had the sense of awareness to look like I meant to do it.

What saved us in a lot of games was enough singles by us to get batters on, but count on our big sticks, Pat and Mark Greene, Chris Patterson and an occasional lucky hit by others to score enough runs to overcome the errors in the field. Occasionally, we’d actually pull off a great play like a throw from deep left to home to get the runner out. Since the catcher never played before, it was a crap shoot whether he’d catch it or not and that we got the out surprised everyone on the field. He was a Dad who was a good sport to put up with us. He had no idea what we did off the field and was as (in)capable as the rest of us on the field (barely).

We’d go on to be about a .500 team. Being a church league, we were fortunate to face groups of people without any little league players who were actually worse than us, or a forfeit.

In the last game of the season against St Margaret Mary, my parents finally came to see me play. They had Ryan Sanderson on the other side, who was a starter at the University of Florida. Ryan also starred at our high school and it would be like playing pick up basketball with Michael Jordan on the other team. Ever at bat went over the fence.

I hit my only homer of the season in that game, in front of my Dad. It was a perfect ending to my only year of somewhat organized softball. Our team went on to hit 16 homers in that game and lost. The other team hit over 20. I’m sure Ryan had at least 5, or how ever many times he got up to bat. Hitting one out in front of my parents overshadowed the loss. Plus, the following made us forget everything.

EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

On the field, we’d try stupid stuff like our first foray’s into chewing tobacco thinking we would be like the big leagues. I remember putting a wad of Red Man into my mouth and heading out to third. By mid inning, I was spitting everything I could and dying for the inning to end so that I could get that shit out of my mouth without embarrassing myself in front of my friends. We routinely had macho contests to prove our masculinity and I couldn’t fail at this in public.

Here’s Robert Earl Keen on dipping snuff, funny song

Fortunately, it was a quick inning and I escaped embarrassment as well as losing my dinner.

After it became clear that we weren’t going to the world series, our other adventures in life crept in. We decided that it would be a good idea to get high before the games and see if we could play. Mark Imhoof who was a regular user provided the goods and the bong. He was the kid who got high in High School, had long hair and a van. He was a good player and the friend of someone else on the team, but he never went to our church. Come to think of it, most of the rest of us had stopped going to church by then also. Since I was high, I’m sure we didn’t play our best, but by then we didn’t really care as much. We came out of that van like Cheech and Chong, trailing smoke.

My roommate George and I lived in his parents house. It was my first home away from home. His parents were missionaries in Guatemala at the time. When the cat’s away, we were the mice. It was the place our friends from the team came to to do stuff they couldn’t do when they were in town and at their parents, meaning drinking and getting high. Many of us lost our virginity there, to the same girl on different nights in different rooms in the house.

AFTER THE GAME

Being a church league team, we celebrated after the game spiritually by going to wherever the pitchers of beer were the cheapest. I recall one dive called the Copper Top. We also went to the Steak Out where you got free Sangria with an order of a steak tough enough to wear as a desert boot. I’m sure they lost money on us given what we drank and we’d go out afterwards for more. We finally got kicked out and got banned from coming back.

There was always beat the clock at Big Daddy’s. If you know the game, the price goes up after a certain time, so you drink as fast as you can at first to keep the price down. We were in college working for minimum wage at the time ($2.00). The beginning price was a nickel a beer and it doubled every half hour. I was hammered by the first tick of the clock as were the rest of the team.

On the off chance that we played on Wednesday, it was also nickle beer night at Rosie O’Grady’s in downtown Orlando.

Nevertheless, a healthy activity sponsored by a religious organization turned into a night of us getting fucked up. I don’t think I had early classes, but I missed them if I did.

That of course led to…

LATE NIGHT GREASE TO SOAK UP THE ALCOHOL

We hit a number of places. Back then, the Grand Slam was $1.99, affordable and enough food to soak up some of the beer before bed.

The other place was Krystal’s. I think the burgers were a nickle there also. It became a dick measuring contest to see how many you could eat. I topped out at 11, but Marc Greene regularly at 25 and went over 30 on some nights. I was in awe of him being an eating machine.

In the end, we only lasted that one season. We were kind of done when we started getting high before the games.

I lost track of most of the players. George and I wound up being best men at each other’s weddings and today are still friends. He transferred out of state to another college and I moved on campus at mine. We never went back to that church again, except for my parents funerals.

Growing up comes in many flavors. This was just the start of my fucking up in life. I had many adventures to come that made this tame.