Bump!
I came into this year deciding that, if I got vaccinated and things looked good, I was going to join as many softball teams as possible. I wanted to sorta-kinda approximate what it feels like to play real baseball, which is to say, a game almost every day for half a year. So I joined
six teams and made up my mind to say yes to any requests to play as a sub if they didn't overtly conflict with something else. Some basic math suggested I could maybe get to 100 games.
It's August now, and I've played in 65 games (some partial, but a bunch of others were nine innings rather than seven, anyway) and I've had almost 250 plate appearances. I should top 100 games easily, and might even get close to 500 at bats, but I'd say 420-430 is more likely.
Unsurprisingly, I've suffered some injuries:
- Most notably, I took an awkward half-slide into second a few months ago and hurt my left knee. I went to physical therapy a few times and, while it's improved, there still seems to be something wrong with it, so I'm seeing a sports medicine doctor on Friday. I think there's a good chance I have a slight meniscus tear and will need (very minor) offseason surgery. But I've been able to play through it without much pain, especially after awhile.
- Most dramatically, a ball hopped up suddenly while I was playing third a bit over a month ago and hit me right in the face. Bridge of the nose. Lotta blood, but if you've ever been hit hard in the nose you know it bleeds a ton even if you don't have any serious injury. That seems to have been the case here: hurt like hell, but I was able to move the nose without pain and it got better over time, so I avoided anything too serious.
- Both legs very sore from a double-header yesterday, and apparently I hurt my index finger a bit (possibly from my habit of guarding against high hops my holding my right hand flat towards the ball, so that if it kicks up it slaps the hand and the ball comes right down into the glove. It works well, if your hand is flat it just hurts for a minute and you usually avoid injury and the ball stays in front of you. But it might've caused a modest injury this time.
There's a lot more, of course. Got a bad brush burn in last Tuesday's game and there've been countless little muscle pulls and minor injuries. Really makes me appreciate how hard it is to stick it out for an entire Major League Baseball season, and how necessary it is that some guys take a random day off now and then.
When I played on just two or three teams at a time in some years past, I was always bummed on days I didn't have a game, or days a game got rained out, but these days I'm happy for the break, even while really enjoying the act of playing anyway.
I've been logging all my stats (not perfectly, but pretty accurately), too, so I can run splits and stuff.
Been a lot of fun, and I think it's the kind of thing my body can simply get used to if I do it again next year (pretty likely). Next year I'd probably elect not to run a Saturday team so that I can leave Saturdays open for tournaments, which is a step up even from what I'm doing now, but we'll see.
Right now, I'm just gonna have to hope the minor injuries don't limit me too much tonight. Or in the double header tomorrow. Or in the double header Wednesday. Or the game Thursday.