Ode to Softball

I often find myself doing in Japan things I haven't done for years, like joining in volleyball training with the girls team at my junior high school. Or like recently, being asked to play softball with the teachers against another school.

I willingly volunteered, the only woman playing with a hearty group of Japanese men, and I looked forward to playing a game I used to love as a kid. But as I practiced throwing and catching and hitting the ball around, I watched the other teachers, the men, many of whom were probably never on a baseball team, but for them everything seemed to come so naturally.

They all knew how to throw, where to instinctively lob the ball to make an out, and I was reminded that I still threw like a girl, that no one had ever shown me how not to throw like a girl, or how to best field the ball, or which bases to watch at what point in the game.

Of course I know how to play, and some of it is merely common sense, but I suddenly felt cheated. Cheated by all the PE teachers who tended to overlook the capabilities of girls in traditionally "male" sports. When I was about seven I asked for a bat, ball and mitt for Christmas. I got an off-yellow Louisville Slugger, a little blue mitt (it was the 70s), and a softball, and my mom's boyfriend started playing catch with me.

I wandered the neighborhood looking for other kids who would play with me, but most of my girlfriends weren't interested. I had a fight with one of them during one hot summer and I remember my rage when she stuck the end of my bat in the hot tar on the street, then proceeded to push down and twirl it around, leaving a permanent, hardened mass of black goo on the end of the bat.

As I continued through elementary school, I became intimidated by the boys on the playing field, the offhand comments from them that inevitably affect the way girls feel when trying to compete. And somewhere along the way, I lost interest and confidence in the game, and here I was, some 20 years later, wishing I hadn't given up.

I had been assigned as pitcher but after some practice I proved completely inadequate in that area and insisted that I wouldn't be able to do it. The baseball coach made a quick switch and I was to play second base. At least then all I had to do was watch the ball and the bases and make mini-assessments. Each time someone came to bat I prepped myself, "Okay, just throw it to first, throw it to first," or "just get over to second and get ready." All the while I was also imagining that the men on the team didn't have to do all that thinking and concentrating--or maybe they did, but not to the extent which I did. Seemingly, it came more intuitively to them.

So when I made a play and got a man out at second, I was overly proud, and even though I never got a base hit, I was releieve that the bat connected with the ball and I didn't strike-out.

Before the actual game, the sympathetic baseball coach was throwing the ball around with me, and finally we stopped for a moment and he walked over to me and showed me how to hold the ball. The power behind the toss doesn't come from the shoulder and the force of the arm's movement, but in the flick of the wrist, and though I'd learned that at some point, no one had ever actually demonstrated and helped me to put it into action.

I could hardly contain my surprise and joy when I started tossing the ball just as he'd shown me, and the praise from the coach made me feel like an ecstatic child who's finally accomplished a daunting new feat. Next, how to field the ball. Left leg in front, meet the ball, pick up and toss. My right leg always came forward more naturally, but I was doing what he said, and getting into the rhythm of it.

I thanked him profusely, for he had no idea how much of a "breakthrough" this small incident was for me. At 29 years old, living in Japan, I learned how to not throw a softball "like a girl".

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