Coming Back
To Play or Not to Play — Was There Ever a Question?
It Began with an Ignored E-Mail
I’m coming out of retirement to play competitive softball this summer. I received an email from the league, like the e-mails I’ve been getting from them for the past four years, ever since I retired, at age 61. I ignored it like I’ve ignored every one of them for four years.
When I walked away from the game, I never looked back. I learned a long time ago, that’s what I have to do, if I’m really serious about leaving something behind. However, I do usually leave a door open. I don’t burn that bridge. I used to do that, when I was younger and dumber. I’m older and wiser now. I know that I might one day need to go back there. This seems to be that day, for me and playing competitive softball. Let me explain.
Leaving it all Behind
Leaving softball behind was really hard for me. I’d just had an eleven year run that was quite remarkable. I started playing again the year I turned 50. I hadn’t played organized ball since my mid-20’s, when I’d hung up my spikes to get serious about life. Then, it was time to put boys’ games aside, and focus on grown-up pursuits — getting and keeping gainful employment, finding a life partner, and raising a family. Those things became priorities. I focused on them, and I did them well — as well as I could.
Finding My Ministry
They say that if you really love something, when you let it go, it will come back to you. Playing ball did return to me– in spades. All through the years, I had this unscratched itch, this inner yearning, to be out on that field, diving at line drives, chasing down fly balls, whipping that ball across the diamond to nail a runner at first by a whisker, pounding line drives to where the fielders weren’t, running around those bases with my hair on fire, being a spark plug for a team struggling to be competitive. It had been my childhood dream, and was still unfulfilled.
The year I turned 50, a team in a softball Master’s League (for players over 35) was looking for players. It was sponsored by the church congregation we’d joined the year before, so the timing was right. It became my ministry for the next 11 years. That first year, I played 16 games, as the team’s Left Fielder. I did alright, although the team only won 1 game out of 20.
Taking Over the Reins
I discovered I still had game. I fell in love with playing ball all over again. The next year, the guy who’d managed the team asked if I’d take over as manager. He could no longer play, due to a foot injury, and couldn’t bear to be out there, managing, if he couldn’t play. I understood that. I took over the reins of the team.
The regular Third Baseman had taken a wicked hop to the nose and eye at the end of the previous season, breaking his nose and eye socket. He’d retired from playing after that gruesome injury. No one else was chomping at the bit to play Third Base, so I wrote myself in at that position. I’d always wanted to play Third Base, and now I had the opportunity to do so.
The Hot Corner
They call it the Hot Corner for a reason. Nowhere on the field do balls come harder and faster than down there at Third. You have to be on your toes at all times, dialed in to the batter, ready to react in a split second. You must be in the moment, at all times. It took me several years and a broken shoulder, but I eventually mastered the Hot Corner. I was dialed in down there.
A Slow Start
My first year managing, the team went 1–19. We weren’t quite as bad as that sounds. We were in most of our games, right up to the last inning. The teams we were playing didn’t seem that much better than us. They simply executed better than we did. They had played together longer. While we just played in the summer league, many of them played in the Spring, Summer and Fall leagues. So, we started doing that. We also moved into the all-ages league, so I could recruit some younger fellows to the team. (I couldn’t take another 1 win season).
That fall, we won 3 games. The following spring, we won 4. Then, we won 5 in the summer, and came in second in the post-season tournament, earning our first ever team trophy. The next two seasons we won 6 and 7 games, respectively, inching ever closer to winning as many as we lost in a season. Playing all three seasons each year, we began to execute better.
In addition to the team I was managing, I began to play on a couple of other teams, that played on different nights of the week. At my peak, I was playing 100 to 120 games a year. I learned a lot from the managers of those other teams about game strategy, which I applied to my team, and we kept getting better.
Turning the Corner
Finally, in my 5th year managing my team, all that strategy and my efforts to put together the best team on the field finally paid off. We came out of the gates strong, and were blowing the competition away, game in and game out. At one point, our record stood at 11–1.
But then, we stumbled and lost a couple games, but held onto our lead as we came down the season’s home stretch. Another team got hot, and was nipping at our heels. Sure enough, it all came down to the final double-header of the season, us against them. We were 15–3, while they were 14–4. All we had to do was win one of those final two games, and we would be champions. They had to win both games, then they would be champions. It was a time to win or go home, in second place.
I had never played on a championship team, at any level, in any sport, in all my years of playing competitively, even as a kid. This was it, my big chance to bring home the ultimate prize. The other team brought their hot bats into the first game, and beat us handily.
Championship Match
It all game down to the nightcap, the final game. We got off to a strong start, and held the lead going into the final inning. They were the home team, so had the final at-bat. We were protecting an 8-run lead, but in softball, when the bats are swinging, no lead is ever safe. Their half of the inning proved that. They just kept pounding the ball where we weren’t, and shrunk our lead down to 2 runs. With 2 outs, they had 2 runners on the bases, and the potential winning run came up to bat.
I was playing right-center field that game (in softball, there are 4 outfielders). We were all playing deep in the outfield, as these guys had been crushing the ball all night long.
The Dying Quail
The batter lifted a hump-back line drive (also known as a “dying quail”) just beyond the reach of the second baseman. I’d taken off at the crack of the bat, running with all my might from my position way out near the fence, as I knew I was our only hope of catching that ball.
I had to make a quick, split second decision — do I go all out, trying to catch it on the fly, which would be game end, and we’d be champions, knowing that if I did, but didn’t make the catch, that ball could skip past me and that runner might circle the bases and win it for the other team before I could retrieve it in time?
Or, do I play it safe, let the ball land in front of me, then pick it up on the bounce and throw it in, in which case both runners would probably score, tying the game up, and we’d be taking our chances with their next big batter, who could win it all for them with one hit?
What Would Roberto Do?
My hero growing up was Roberto Clemente, right fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Roberto (also known as “the Great One”) never played it safe. He went all out on every play, just as he did in the way he lived his life. He had died, tragically, on New Year’s Eve, 1972, when his planeload of relief supplies for earthquake victims in Nicaragua had gone down into the sea shortly after take-off near San Juan, Puerto Rico, where my hero was from.
His remains were never found. That was when I learned that, despite the assertion from Tom Hanks’ character in the movie “A League of Their Own”, there is, indeed, crying in baseball. I bawled my 18-year old eyes out when I heard that news.
So, as I was charging in for that ball, trying to decide whether to go all out, or to play it safe, I thought “What would Roberto do?” I never hesitated — I went all out, balls to the wall, knowing I risked our season if I missed it, but, if I caught it….
The Play
I have never been more focused than I was on that ball. I really didn’t think I could get there, but I somehow found a reserve shot of energy, kicked it into a gear I didn’t think I had, reached out my glove as I ran, and just before that ball hit the outfield grass, it somehow found the webbing of my glove, which I brought up to my chest, as my momentum carried me stumbling into the infield, holding onto that ball for dear life, then realizing it was all over — we had won!!! I’d made the final play, in as dramatic a fashion as was possible, and for just that moment, I completely lost my mind. I was mobbed by my teammates, and carried off the field, a champion at last!
WE WERE CHAMPIONS — MY FRIENDS AND I — I’d impossibly made the final play. You couldn’t write it any better than that!
I knew, deep in my heart, that somewhere out there, in baseball heaven or wherever fallen heroes roam the eternal outfields of baseball immortality, that the ghost of my childhood hero, Roberto Clemente, was smiling down upon me.
I think if he were here with me now, he would say, “Play, Pete. Play while you still can.” Who am I to argue with the Great One?
