Until this summer, I’d spent most of my life avoiding team sports.
Other than a brief stint on a junior high volleyball team that ended when I couldn’t master the overhand serve, I stayed away from group athletics. My younger brother filled the role of the sporty kid in our family, while I was the bookish one who spent summers in the library and schoolday afternoons with the Girl Scouts and later the marching band.
So when a friend asked me to join her co-ed softball team this year–they were in desperate need of another girl–all my memories of being an uncoordinated kid came back in a flash.
I struggled for days about whether I should say yes. On one hand, I’d moved to Chicago just last fall and was eager to make new friends and be part of something that seemed like such a big part of summer here.
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Plus, I had a nagging feeling I’d be missing out if I didn’t join. I had recently demurred on an interoffice kickball match because I was worried I’d make a fool of myself in front of co-workers. After watching from the sidelines and realizing how little athletic skill kickball requires, I realized how silly my concerns had been.
Still, the softball invitation triggered thoughts about what learning to play softball at age 30 would be like. I could picture myself striking out every time, missing every play, getting konked in the head with a ball, making the other team double over in laughter and causing my team to regret they’d ever asked me to join.
“I’m not good,” I told my friend.
“I’m not, either,” she replied, though I didn’t believe her. Finally, she wore me down. With one last defeated disclaimer that I hadn’t actually played softball before, I agreed to do it.
I once interviewed a woman who ran a language institute where corporate executives and other successful businessmen and -women were sent for intensive foreign language classes. She told me that adults have a much harder time than kids learning a new language, because they’re petrified of goofing up and looking foolish in front of others, while kids just jump into trying to speak it. Apparently the more successful a person is in one area of her life, the more self-conscious she is about bumbling over verb tenses, forgetting vocabulary and mispronouncing words.
Her comment stuck with me years later because it was similar to how I felt about learning to play a sport late in life. I’m not adverse to trying new things–in fact, I wanted to be a reporter because the job means getting to do something different each day. It’s the other people watching you try it, and depending on you to succeed that gets me with the team sports.
My stomach was in knots the first couple of softball practices. When I struck out over and over again in batting practice, I’d feel my cheeks burn and think, “I never should have done this.”
But thanks to a very understanding bunch of teammates who cheered every time I actually made contact with a ball–and urged me to try again when I missed– I started to have fun. I was thrilled if I made a hit during a game–even if the hit turned into an out.
I struck out a lot, and I missed all of the pop-up balls that came my way. But I accomplished one of my goals: I scored a run in the second-to-last game. It doesn’t sound like much, certainly not for a whole season (sorry, Snakeheads!), but it was something I’d written off being able to do a long time ago.
As summer comes to an end this week, I can look back on my first season playing ball and say I got something out of it. I learned the benefit of letting go of old fears and trying new things.
But the best thing by far was the chance to sit in a bar afterward with the other Snakeheads, sharing pitchers of beer and reliving the game, just being part of the team.
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