#8: Take a Swing at the Batting Cages

When I was younger, my brother and I would play baseball in the backyard. We had this perfect diamond layout with a small pine standing as umpire, a large maple at first, a sapling at second, and a young crabapple tree at third. My brother and I, having moved around a lot and used to adapting games to only two players, had adjusted the normal rules of baseball to suit our needs. Our game involved the use of several ghostmen, and a lot of theoretical debates over whether said ghostmen were safe or not.

I was not athletic growing up. My family was not heavily involved in sports, and I was not formally introduced to team sports until high school. For me, my most memorable athletic moments came in that backyard with my brother, when I would hit a ball that would go flying into a neighbor's yard two doors down. It wasn't until years later when I realized we had been hitting tennis balls with an aluminum bat; of course it went flying. But at the time, it was the first indication that perhaps I could try something athletic and not suck at it. Those memories are what inspired me to add the batting cages to my list.

Tonight started as one of those magical evenings that Kevin and I have every so often. He called on the way home to exclaim on what a beautiful night it was and to say he would stop along the way for a box of Rocks. I met him on the patio where we began to casually discuss life and our days in general. One of us came up with the idea of a small game of catch out in the front yard, and we grabbed gloves and a ball and headed out. From there I mentioned the fact that we still needed to go to the batting cages to cross it off my list, and Kevin spontaneously suggested we go now.


As we stepped into the cage I asked Kevin where the helmets were and he informed me that it wasn't really necessary in the slow pitch softball cages. I asked him to evaluate my swing beforehand and I could immediately see from the look on his face that I needed a lot of work. I dropped my token and tried my best. The slowness of the pitch caught me off guard as far as the timing of my swing. Further, klutz that I am, I somehow managed to put the first two fingers of my right hand in the path of the ball during one swing. It hurt and I cursed, but stepped back up to the plate. Kevin tried to give me a few pointers, while I tried through trial and error to adjust my swing. Overall, I found out I am not the prodigy hitter that I had imagined myself at age 7. But I had fun in a "I tried something new and was challenged" sort of way. And that's really what this whole list is about.

***Not my best swing featured in the picture, but it's the only one that came out.

7 down; 23 to go