Outside Oberlin

Intramural Softball: Oberlin's Fountain of Youth

Third grade Saturday mornings were always about one of two things: cartoons, or T-ball. There were the early games, when we eight year-olds would roll out of bed and into our white polyester softball pants worn over coloured stirrups, those worn over the thick white socks, size-six baseball cleats at the bottom of it all. Sleepy-eyed, I remember grabbing my water bottle and miniature-sized glove, and Daddy would drive me up to big park at the top of the town in time for the groggy 8:30 a.m. practice for the 9 a.m. game. The grass was always dewy, and fielding grounders was always kind of a struggle, attempting to get a good grip on a ball covered with wet blades of grass.

But we showed up without fail all those Saturday mornings, alternating the no-cartoon early games vs. the cartoon late games when we could all get a little more sleep and play in 11 a.m. sunshine on dry grass. Of course, then there was the mid-day sun angle effect, when you could catch all three outfielders squinting and yawning instead of paying attention to the action at home plate. (These were the times when the outfielders saw the most balls hit over their heads, helplessly blinded in the process.) If the in-field action was slow enough, you might even catch a bored right fielder actually sitting down in the grass, absently stringing daisy chains around the non-gloved hand until yells from one of the coaches (usually the star players' dads) brought the situation back to grim reality: This is the Claremont Youth Softball Organization. More specifically, this is the Under 10 Years division: T-Ball.

In retrospect, the whole concept of T-ball is pretty funny. You've got a kid four feet tall wearing a batting helmet two sizes too big sloppily shading half their face, attempting to pose in a hitting stance when in actuality, the ball isn't even moving. The nervous little kid has three chances to hit a ball poised perfectly still on a tee in front of them the whole time. And even then, it was not unheard of to strike out. Those were the Minors.

Major League T-Ball was a little more challenging. I can't remember for sure, but I think the rules went something like this: amateur pitcher attempts to toss a ball underhand somewhere in the shoulder-to-kneecap range of the kid at the plate, trying not to hit them in the process. The kid at the plate gets two chances to hit the ball lobbed toward them at approximately 20 mph. When this fails, a coach reluctantly drags out the tee - an embarrassing enough production in itself, situating the awkward, thick rubber mass of base and stick, slowing the game up - and if the little slugger can't hit it then, humiliation kills another nine year-old.

But finally one year, we were old enough to graduate to Major League Softball. This was the real deal. No more T-ball-sized balls, no more tees, and no more boys; T-ball may have been an equal opportunity sport, but around age 12, little girls and little boys split fields. The boys played baseball and got to wear uniforms modeled after the real teams (back then, everyone wanted to be on the Bluejays), and the girls played softball. Period.

Sure, there was the pressure to play well in front of my dad, the pressure to catch the pop-flies in the deep right in the heat of late-May when the sweat on my brow under my adjustable-strap cap was unbearable. But the pressure was a good kind of pressure, the kind of excited pressure that I remember getting when the coaches would call out "Viera on deck." We were allowed to steal. We were allowed to slide. There were huddles, plays, and real umpires with real umpire calls, and there were real fans who actually went to the park on Saturday mornings just to watch a bunch of girls play softball. There were the "Heeeeeeeey, bat-ter" cat calls at the other team, the end of the game goodgamegoodgamegoodgame hand-slap line-ups, the crucial play-offs where the last out always went home in tears, and the triumphant wins where we went home with trophies of gold plastic little girls with ponytails and boobs bigger than any 11 year-old could dream of.

Ten years later, I have been given the chance to re-live my youth.

The Oberlin intramural softball league is perhaps the best thing that has happened since the Presti's vs. Krispy Kreme free donut face-off earlier this year. The only drawbacks: no sliding, no stealing and no tee. But otherwise, the league borrows from every favourite old-school, back to the basics softball rule: Slow-pitch to your own team. Foul your last pitch and you're out. Hit your pitcher and you're out. And of course there are the additional rules that never would have applied to the average young T-baller (talk too much trash and you're out, fall over drunk and you're out), but the mentality is the same. Only better.

Pair the best rules of softball with the worst faux pas of public etiquette, and you've got the makings for one of the finest sports in history. There's no rule against smoking at bat. There's no rule against toting a Bud with you to left field. Spitting is encouraged; trash-talking is practically a given. And in the end, the team with the catchiest name wins, even if it's as ridiculous as the Review's own Horny Lesbian Bunnies. Hey, at least it beats 1998's misfortunate Mis-Quotes, whose star players cared less about playing sports than they did about editing them. (Go figure: we've made the first cut of playoffs this year; the Mis-Quotes never won a game.)

In the end, it's the crack of the aluminum bat against the ball that really does it for me. It always has. Softball is about the smell of fresh cut grass, oiling your glove on the off-days, and wearing a bent-bill baseball cap like you were born in it. Intramural softball doesn't award trophies of girls with pony tails; those always ended up gathering dust in cardboard boxes the next season anyway. Besides, trophies are nothing compared to pride - real pride, for putting together a team, and winning. Oberlin has limited power to transform a select number of scholars into real athletes. At least for the rest of us, there's intramural softball.