Opening Day

Our softball league’s spring season began today. Most of the old crew was back, with a couple of new faces. We faced a new opponent for this first game, as one of the town’s Methodist churches is fielding a second unit this year. I was on third, as usual, playing four of the five innings. (With one extra man, we had a three-way rotation going.)
From a fielding perspective, I’m out of practice. My throws to first were a wee bit short each time. At the plate, I was much happier with my performance, going 2-4 with a walk. No RBIs this game, but I did advance runners each time I got on base.
Final score was 18-7, and we’re 1-0 to kick off the season. It was a good start, working a lot of the kinks out after being off for four months. My time off was much longer, due to the injury I sustained at the end of last year’s summer season, and it showed. Time to hit the cages, and get to throwing around more with the guys in the neighborhood.
One of our ladies took a shot to the head in the second inning. She was on third, and the batter at the plate, another lady, tattooed the ball right down the third-base line and beaned her before she could get out of the way. She was very woozy, but never passed out. One of the guys on our team is the assistant fire chief for the town, and has some EMS training, and we kept her under observation on the bench the rest of the game. We all encouraged, asked, and begged her to go to the hospital to get checked out, just to be assured there was nothing critically wrong. We’ll be checking up on her in the coming days.