Family, fans suffer for softball players

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July 25, 2010

By SUSAN TEBBEN Glasgow Daily Times The Glasgow Daily Times Sun Jul 25, 2010, 06:05 AM CDT

GLASGOW — Watching the girls play in the Ohio Valley Region softball tournament made me somewhat nostalgic for the old days when I played ... or was in shape, for that matter. But amongst all that nostalgia was the memories we all forget when we’re adolescents running around in the dirt and grass of the ball fields.

It was oppressively hot and a powerful storm was coming to wreck the game.

Like the chaos that caused the roads around Woodstock to be closed and traffic to be at a standstill for hours, even days, the players tend to forget — or block out — those facts. We remember hitting our first triple or grabbing the line drive we didn’t think we could reach. The triple digits on the heat index were trifles in our minds.

Except when we had to practice. No matter how much one loves the game they play, practicing can get annoying, especially when it’s hot and the amusement park is selling discount tickets. If I truly think back to my near-decade in the summer leagues, I remember being excited to sign up and play with my friends, but not so excited to run windsprints in the outfield when it was 93 and humid.

These are the things the people that came to support us remember. These are the reasons we need to appreciate even more the friends and family that drove out of their way and watched their skin gradually redden as they sat on the hard bleachers and watched that tiny cloud in the distance become a huge puffy cloud, ready to burst at any second.

For the first part of my softball “career” I played at a group of fields with a parking lot that, when it rained even a little, would become a mudhole causing huge vans to become a mess of dirt and hopelessly spinning tires. The fields weren’t much better. The second league had fields with brick dust that drained away the water better, but was slippery as all get out when players tried to run or stop on it. I’ll always remember feeling bad for my mom when I’d slide into second almost halfway between bases, going through a giant puddle and essentially ending up as a giant pile of mud myself. I should probably start making payments to compensate for the amount of bleach she had to buy for my softball uniforms alone.

The folks that have been a part of the OVR tournament know this well. When the players think back, they’ll think of the honor of making it to the tournament and maybe even the friends they met from different states around the country, that they never would have met if it weren’t for softball. The supporters will remember this, too, and the pride they felt when their daughter struck out a batter or snagged a ball that looked certain to head over the fence. But they’ll also remember contemplating how many showers it would take to finally rinse off all the sweat and sunscreen.

I still miss the game; the ping of the aluminum bat, the rush of seeing a ball coming toward me, the camaraderie and the very creative chatter from the dugout. I don’t miss the heat or the crack of a softball against an ankle or bad knee.

But still, to this day, those seem like trivialities, in truth. It was worth it to get to play. Still, players appreciate the people sitting in the stands weekend after weekend, swigging giant water bottles like they’re in the middle of the desert. Don’t just toss your equipment in the doorway and keep moving. And please, for our parents’ sake, put the mud crusted pants in the washer rather than on the clean floor. It’s the least we could do. Then we can all remember what good days we had playing — and watching — a great American sport.

Susan Tebben is a reporter who covers local government, law enforcement and courts for the Glasgow Daily Times. She can be contacted by e-mail at stebben@glasgowdailytimes.com.

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Family, fans suffer for softball players

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