Split a double header last night.  Lost 8-2 in our first game.  Scored 2 in the first and then gave up 6 in the bottom of the first.  Only got 3 hits all game.  In the second game we were down 2-0 going into the bottom of the seventh.  We managed 3 bunt singles, a hit by pitch, and a two run single to win 3-2.  We discovered a weakness.

 Not much to say about this one.
We gave up 7 runs in the first inning of both games in our double header and never got going after that.  Pitching fail to start, offensive fail after that.  L 11-1, L 8-0.
At least it was a nice night.

For some reason, most men’s fastpitch leagues and tournaments refuse to use those easy to see neon yellow softballs they use in the women’s games I’m watching hour after hour on television this weekend.  When they make me president of the world of men’s fastpitch, I will declare that forever more these easier to see balls will be used. 

Having played in a few tournaments where these balls are used, I can say that major difference comes during the twilight hours in the field when it can be very difficult to see a batted ball.  And that’s where the game is most potentially dangerous with third basemen and pitchers exposed to rocketed line drives. 

When I write my book about men’s fastpitch softball, there will be a chapter dedicated to the ball itself, its evolution, its varieties, its color.  It will be a substantive chapter.  I’m serious.

Last week I drove to Benton Harbor to play in a church league fastpitch softball game, and ever since then I cannot get out my mind this impossible hope of someday having a local church fastpitch league to play in again.

When I was fourteen, I played in my first fastpitch softball game, on my dad’s church team at the Prairie Camp. In those days my church could field two full fastpitch teams. Because men who played softball played fastpitch softball. Since then I’ve had an overwhelming passion for the game. I love watching it played by the best players in the world where the pitching is virtually unhittable. I’ve played a few games with and against world class competition, but more often, these days, I play regularly on a travel league team that’s middle of the pack.

But that’s not my hope for the future of men’s fastpitch. Playing in that church league game in Benton Harbor, which could only be described as the lowest levels of men’s fastpitch, reminded me again that the lowest level of men’s fastpitch–like a local start-up church league I daydream about–is both more fun and simply better than the highest level of slow pitch softball (where enormous, steroid charged, beer-chuggers hit blooped in pitches three hundred feet with $400 bats–how stupid).

Last night playing church league slow pitch softball at Cedar Road Missionary Church, all I could think about was how much more fun every player on both teams could be having if we stopped the game right where it was and declard that for the rest of the night and for the rest of the season we’d be playing fastpitch.

So what that no one really knows how to pitch; we’d learn. So what we don’t have helmets–no one wore helmets to play softball until the late 1980s. So what we don’t have any catchers gear…okay, maybe we’d need some catchers gear. And we’d need move the bases in to the correct distance and the pitching rubber would have to be moved forward.

None of these are impossible obstacles to overcome. All we need is the will to try it.

I’d even settle for a happy medium called “modified fast pitch”.