Acid on Base, 0-1

One of the post-docs in the department organized a softball team and signed us up for the city's fall league. While we had several practices before the season started last night, let's go ahead and admit that we're (mostly) chemists. Not athletes.

Honestly we really didn't do too terribly. We lost 18-12...supposedly. We definitely lost, that's not the question, but we could have sworn the other team at 16 runs going in to our last at-bat...but anyways. It's not like it would have changed the outcome. Aside from a really rough first inning where everybody was still getting their feet under them, we didn't have a bad game. If the other team hadn't batted around and then some in that first inning, it would have been a really close game. And we made (and almost made haha) some really great plays.

This is the first time I've played in a city, slow-pitch, rec league like this. So far I actually find it somewhat annoying in how complicated it is! The university rec league has some funny rules, but not nearly as many as the city league. In the campus league, as long as you have 3 women on the field, it doesn't matter what positions they play. In this league, the outfielders have to be 2 men/2 women, infielders also 2 men/2 women, and pitcher/catcher has to be one of each gender. And if the pitcher walks a man, it's 2 bases rather than 1! In theory the idea is to prevent people from walking men to get to the female batters. Aside from being sexist is just annoying. Nobody's deliberately walking anybody. They also use 11" balls when men bat and 10" balls when women bat. Yes, yes, the men are mostly stronger than the women, and I can hit the 10" ball farther than the 11" ball. But sheesh. It means you have to swap the ball after EVERY batter! It's ridiculous!

For such a high-strung league, the umpiring was certainly less than stellar. There were at least 2 blatantly terrible calls, and one point when the umpire told me (I was catching) the wrong number of outs before the play, leading to quite the confusion following the play. Hopefully that was a one-night thing and next week will have better officiating, and we'll play more mediocre-ly and less terribly. :)