When Softball Turns into WWF Smackdown
There are times in life when I'm not so proud of myself. Unfortunately those times are more often than they should be. I don't know where my brain goes, but it leaves me unable to make good decisions. And sometimes unable to just keep my mouth shut.

When two bad softball teams come together for a game, it begs to reason we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously. Especially in the D League of a city league, one bad team versus another should generally just be a time to have fun and enjoy the sport. This did not happen last night, as my team and another bad team in the league played each other. It got ugly.

We'd had trouble with this team before, which ironically is the team for the local office of a global company with the slogan "Quality in everything we do." Last season they arrived with attitude and generally did not treat us well, making fun of us even though they are not very good themselves. That makes the whole thing less fun for us, because we just want to play and have fun. The D League is not the competitive league, and we don't make fun of other teams in the league. But we also have some tempers on our team, and it sometimes doesn't take much for us to return the attitude favor.

The game last night started well. No problems. Hit, catch, run, throw. We made some points. They made some points. Everything seemed okay.

Then, it happened. A runner rounded second base and headed towards third base. Our shortstop threw the ball to third base to cut her off, and as our thirdbase girl reached up to tag the runner, the runner just decided to plow into her and knock her down. Hard. It was ugly.

So, we are sure the runner is out, yet the umpire called the runner safe. Wha-huh? Not only did she flat out plow into my teammate, she really knocked her down hard, taking her off the base. She was not a small woman, and the force of her running full steam at our player succeeded in knocking our player down hard. The only reason she made it to the base was because she forcefully removed our thirdbase girl from the base. Which I guess led the ump to the conclusion that she was safe. She was actually tagged way before she made it to the base.

Well, third base was ticked. As she should be. She rewarded the runner, who was still sprawled out on the ground clinging to the base like she'd earned it, by kicking her with a faceful of dirt. Not once, but twice. That started a near brawl.

Now, we are a church team playing in a non-church league. But admittedly we get lured into some heated battles with idiots who take D League softball way too seriously. I don't condone the dirt kicking, but I can understand where it came from. We are not in this to run people over and cause injury, just to win a stupid softball game. The runner's decision to make this a full contact sport was a bad decision. It was clear the umps call here condoned the practice of charging other players on the field. And incidentally, he'd made a similar call a few weeks earlier.

So after the dirt kicking, the other team came over in full force to defend their player. Our thirdbase girl's husband came running over from the outfield to have a few words with the ump, in reference to this call and the last time he'd made the same bad call. He was ticked that his wife was just bowled over, and we didn't at least get the call in our favor. We may be a church, but we are tired of our players taking the brunt of knockdowns, while the other team gets away with it. Would they knock Jesus down if He was playing thirdbase? I don't think so.

Now, our biggest guy on the team is about a foot shorter and at least a hundred pounds lighter than the biggest guy on their team. So when their big dude came over to get in several of our guys' faces, it would have been funny had it not been such an angry situation. I play second base, and I had run over near the incident to voice my thoughts on the bad call and the runner's bad decision to run over my friend. A few other players from both teams had now congregated, and the ump seemed to not realize that a fight was about to break out. This had all taken place within about five seconds.

It really was one of those slow-motion things for the next few minutes. Some of my team is trying not to get involved and instead calm people down, but others on my team are furious at the injustice of the situation, and at the potential injury causing decision of the runner. Had a guy been playing third base, Miss Offensive Tackle Runner probably would not have dared to run him down. And she definitely would have been tagged out, much like she had been before she took out our thirdbase player. So my team was thoroughly ticked that our thirdbase girl could really have been injured, and the runner was still called safe.

The ump finally woke up and started threatening to throw people out of the game if we didn't get back into position and start playing. Their big dude was still in the face of my friend's husband, and they were arguing about who should or should not 'bring it on' at that moment.

Their team members in the dugout were laying it on with the yelling and shouting of rude sarcastic comments about how much our team sucks, yada yada. The rest of us started wandering back to our places on the field, still shocked and perturbed at this turn of events. Not only was it a bad call, but the other team was being really rude about it and taking it on longer than it needed to go.

Well, they kept on arguing. The ump was arguing with our players and the big dude from the other team. Then the little punk who was standing at second base started mouthing off to no one in particular, just to be a part of his team's big head. I happened to be in that area, since second base is my area, and this is when I became very non-proud of myself.

I decided to mouth off back to him, just because I couldn't stand his attitude. He was saying that if people are in your way, you should just knock them down. So I told him he might be in my way right now. Keep in mind, I am a tall, skinny white girl, and I am really bad at talking smack when I'm angry, yet I still can't help myself sometimes. I talk big, but likely about things I can't back up, and most of what I say during a heated conversation doesn't come out of my mouth making as much sense as it did in my head. So telling this guy that he's in my way right now, like I'm going to walk over and knock him down on the spot, was obviously a dumb thing to say. While I am not to be under-estimated in my strength and abilities, this little punk, easily the smallest person on their team and definitely shorter and skinnier than me, would probably have had no problem beating the crap out of me. He was very 'street' looking. I am not so much 'street', as scared of 'street'. But even though I've never actually been in a fist fight, at this moment I was seriously wanting to start something with this guy just because he was sincerely asking for it, knowing full well that if he decided to beat up on a girl (me) I would be in serious trouble.

Well he turned around and said something stupid, and he said I should watch myself. He called me 'A-train', which I didn't get and made me laugh. I told him to watch himself, because I couldn't think of anything better to say. And I said if we're playing to knock people down then they'd better watch out because it was our turn to return the favor. He said again that it's the game to knock people down, and I just laughed at him. Since when is softball about knocking people down?

I really wanted to keep arguing with him because I really wanted to win something on the field last night, even if just an argument with an idiot. But whatever he was saying quit making sense and was hard to understand, so I didn't know how to respond. And I was really, really mad, so I'm sure whatever I would have said wouldn't have come out making much sense, either. So I just gave him a cold, icy stare and laughed at him, like I had the upper hand. And then I turned my attention back to the game and checking roll around the field, to make sure all of our players were still accounted for and more or less intact.

Obviously the true idiot was me engaging the loser in a losing conversation, but I wasn't ready to admit that, yet.

So, our playing went downhill from there. We finally resumed play, and we were all too distracted by what had just happened to concentrate on winning the game. The other team continued their jokes and laughing and sarcasm and rudeness throughout the rest of the game, getting a big kick out of every single out they made. And it was not a fun experience. Especially when the game was called early because there was no way we would ever catch up. I think we'd decided we were tired of listening to them, and we all kinda gave up so we could get out of there and away from them.

Of course a better way to handle the situation would have been less dirt kicking and smack talking, and more good sportsmanship and closed mouths, even in the midst of their provoking. We know that, and we are not proud of the way we behaved, although we were in much more control and in better taste than the other team.

But still, when softball becomes WWF Smackdown, the rules and good sportsmanship seem to fly out the window. And I can't help but have a few choice words to say about that.

C.T.