The JV Experience

I have been MIA for quite a while as far as writing goes, and I have friends who will attest to the fact that I haven’t even written them e-mails in the past few weeks and they probably hate me by now. But things have happened in my life lately that have kept me from my duties of writing fart jokes and joking about poo and all the normal topics of discussion I usually decide to post for all the world to see on my blog.

I sincerely apologize for my disappearing act, but my plate has been quite full since March 15th of this year, as I have been assistant coaching JV softball at ******* High School on top of working my regular job. Basically I have been leaving my house at 6AM every morning and coming home at 7 or 8 PM every night except for weekends—and even on weekends I was busy as we had a doubleheader against **** that somehow managed to last nearly 8 hours. It’s been quite a ride. I haven’t even been to the zoo or anything! I wonder if the animals miss me.

We finished the season with the stellar record of 3 wins, 11 losses and 2 ties. Believe me, it was much rougher than that record portrays. I don’t want to bash the girls on the team, but we had 15 girls on the team and I would say that 2 of them are what one would consider “athletes” by any stretch of the imagination. Not to say the other girls didn’t try, but there is a very distinct difference between an athlete and someone who attempts athletic endeavors while worrying about her hair and if she looks fat in her sliders.

Anyway, after so many long days and so many losing games and so many practices where I just got the feeling that most of the girls just didn’t give a care if we won or not, I was really ready for the season to be over. We had our last game on Wednesday, and I was excited to put the season behind me. It was my first time coaching athletics and I really didn’t know what to expect, but I definitely expected more dedication from people who willingly came out to play the game. I didn’t necessarily expect fanaticism, but I expected a lot more than I got. The only thing that ever seemed to get the girls riled up was a discussion about what kind of pants they were going to have to wear to school with their game day jerseys—I had NO IDEA that jeans could be such a horrible thing to wear with a jersey . . . I think most of the girls would have rather spent a winter in a Russian gulag than to have to wear jeans on an 80-degree day. Then they could wear their Ugg boots and a cute sweater and a hair tie or whatever fashion statement a Scottsdale girl needs to make while in a labor camp in the tundra of Siberia.

So I showed up for the last game fully expecting to take my normal spot along the first base line as the first base coach/official scorekeeper/outfield coach. Instead I got the keys to the field thrown to me by the head coach as he had to attend to a regional track meet at the request of the district athletic director.

“Good luck, head coach,” he said as he tossed me the keys. “It’s all yours today.”

And so I HEAD coached my first softball game. And I will let you in on a secret: I don’t know shit about coaching softball.

Sure, I can teach someone to catch and throw a ball, and I can teach someone to hit, especially if they don’t already have a clue as to what they are doing. I know how to run and I know how to throw and I have a rudimentary knowledge of the game that I learned from coaching first base (which, for those unfamiliar with the game, is basically just telling girls to “run through” if they need to try to beat a throw to first or telling a girl to “go two” if they can safely advance to second base). I was saddled with the scorekeeping book for the whole season on top of coaching first, so for most of the game I was busy trying to keep track of balls and strikes and runs scored and whether or not the girl on second base got there because of an error, a passed ball, a wild pitch, a single and a stolen base, or a double. There is a LOT going on in that game, let me tell you.

So there I was, standing on the third base line, responsible for calling signals (bunt, pullback bunt, delay bunt, swing away, etc.) to fifteen girls, lining up the outfield to cover a hitter’s tendencies, keeping the girls on second so they didn’t steal without my signal, and trying to keep the girls in the dugout from saying something insanely inappropriate to the umpire and getting themselves kicked out of the game. It was a little overwhelming, I will admit.

I finally called the girls together after the second inning and told them I was NOT going to be giving them signals to bunt or anything else. I wanted all of them to go up to the plate with a little swagger and swing away and make something happen because at this point we were already down 9-0 (remember what I said about how my cup runneth over with athletes on the team). The first girl up after that speech proceeds to step one foot into the batter’s box and then look down the line at me for the sign. I made no attempt to disguise our sign for “swing away,” which she promptly did and got out thanks to a POWERFUL hit that dribbled to the pitcher in slow motion. The next girl came up and did the same thing, only this time she swung and missed three times.

“Are you kidding me?” I thought to myself. “What part of “I’m not going to give you a signal so just swing away” do these girls not understand?” I gave another swing away sign. The same thing happened with the next girl, and the next. About the 4th inning I finally realized that they had ACTUALLY learned something during the season and they were going to continue looking down the line to get the sign whether I wanted them to or not. Just doing what they'd been told for the last 15 games, finally.

And that’s when I relaxed. I figured we were already out of the game at this point and we were going to get 10-run ruled in the 5th inning anyway, so as the girls came up to bat, I decided to get a little stupid with my signs. I started doing the “rubber-baby-buggy-bumpers” sign (patting yourself on the top of the head with one hand while rubbing your belly with the other hand) before giving the swing sign. I did a little bit of Madonna’s “Vogue” hand movements before the swing away sign. I did every sign we have in succession before giving the indicator for the swing. I did everything I could think of to just keep it lighthearted and fun out there.

So THAT’S when the girls finally started hitting the ball. We actually started a little rally there in the bottom of the 4th inning. One girl told me that if I did a Michael Jackson dance she would hit me a home run. When she stepped into the box I gave her a little leg kick and an MJ point before giving the swing sign. She laughed so hard and got her first ACTUAL hit of the season (before that she was our designated bunter and only reached on bunts or errors for the season), which was as good as a home run in my book, and probably hers, too. She was SO happy over on first base, celebrating her first REAL hit she almost forgot to run when the next girl came up and ripped a shot into left field.

Of course, it all had to end, it was too little too late and we still ended up getting 10-run ruled in the sixth inning. But at one point we were having so much fun out there none of that mattered. The umpire actually came up to me after the end of the 5th inning and said, “Do those girls know they’re losing this game? I’ve never seen a losing team having this much fun before.”

I told him that the girls haven’t known a score of a game for the WHOLE season so why start now? I took his remark as a compliment though (he did say it very good-naturedly, more in amazement than anything) because I think that JV softball SHOULD be fun for the girls. Winning is nice, but the fact that the girls improved over the course of the year (for instance, we had 17 errors in our first game and only 3 in our last one) and learned little things like what “there’s two outs so run on anything,” means. Even if it did take them 16 games to understand the concept of running on a pop fly ON PURPOSE and not just because they don’t understand what “tag up” means.

After the game the girls started running pulls like they normally do. A pull is where all the girls line up on the third base line and run in the outfield a distance equal to the distance between the bases. I watched them run 4 pulls before one of the girls kind of hesitated and said, “I want to hear Sir Patrick (my nickname to the girls, for some reason) tell us to run.”

I said, “I wasn’t even going to make you ladies run, but since you started I wanted to see how far you’d go before you started complaining about it. Looks like I got four out of you.” They all laughed and came running in around me and took a knee and looked up at me and begged for a speech. I just told them, “Thank you for allowing me to be your coach this year, it was an honor and a privilege and I hope you girls really had some fun this year. If you want me back next year, I will definitely be back.” One girl stood up and took her headband off and gave it to me. The girls all wanted me to put it on so I put it on over the top of my hat to the applause of the girls.

It was such a heartwarming moment that is HAD to be followed up with one of them jumping up and saying, “Let’s get Sir Patrick with a Gatorade bath!” As I found out during the course of the season, the girls could say the sweetest things one minute and follow it up 30 seconds later with a statement equivalent to pure evil. Such is the mind state of a 15-year-old girl, I guess. All of the girls ran to the dugout and grabbed the cooler full of ice water (they grabbed the wrong cooler) and came running at me with it. Unfortunately for them a cooler full of ice water weighs probably 80 or 90 pounds so it took three of them to lift it high enough to pour it on me, which was unfortunate for them because all I had to do was grab the front of the cooler and push it back and it DRENCHED all three of the girls who decided to try to lift it while getting my left leg slightly damp.

That just goes to show you that being bad at softball also equates to being a poor tactician in the art of dumping water on people. Just another thing for them to work on next year, I guess. But I hope they work on hitting first.

B!