I am Jack's overwhelming sense of shame

I am Steve Sax. I am Chuck Knoblauch.

I can't throw to first.

Solution?

Try me at first.

...

Really? Um, okay. That's only, like, 87 times scarier than third. I mean, aside from being involved in far too many plays, it also requires taking throws from ol' Lightnin' Arm (a.k.a. my replacement at third. He throws hard). None of this is good, trust me.

After falling behind 10-0 (not my fault), the experiment ended. While I was not involved in many plays, I think my general lack of confidence (I'm 90% sure I was making the "about to get hit by a train" face the whole time) had settled over the entire team and was dragging them down. Suffice to say, time for a change.

It was an ill-fated experiment and happily it ended after only 2 innings and I was back at third. However, there is still the fact that I still can't throw to first to deal with. The thing is, the arm is willing but the brain is stupid. My solution to this little predicament was to try and miss in the dirt rather than over the first baseman's head. And actually, this was a pretty good solution. Only one of my throws ended up out of play and I managed to record 2 out of 3 opportunities into outs (Victory!). You see, the things is, I can field the ball, I just can't throw the ball. And really, throwing is the most important part of the fielding process.

Steve Sax disease is not an easy thing to deal with. I'm just trying to take it one play at a time.

Hey! As long as I'm embarassing myself with tales of ineptitude, why not talk about my hitting? Do you want to know what shame is? Taking a called third strike in softball, that's shame. After that called third, my slump had reached epic proportions (I was now 0 for my last 5). But you don't blog about baseball as much as I do with learning a little something about clutch hitting (who can tell me what I just paraphrased? Who is still reading this?). Facing the ignominy of the mercy rule (we were down 17 in the 5th and needed 3 runs to continue) our team sucked it up (and why not, we'd been sucking it up all afternoon). A couple hits fall in and I found myself up to bat with men on base. I'd been pulling the ball in the last few ABs, which is not really my strength (actually, softball isn't me strength, but that's not important right now), and so I focused very hard on going to the opposite field and...success! A little flare over the 2nd baseman's head. Thus ends my 0-5 slump and we live to play another inning. Of course, they scored another million or so runs in the next inning, and so we were slaughtered anyway, but it wasn't as bad a slaughter. Baby steps. I did manage one more hit on the night, another shot over second (and I might mention that I scored each time on base. I'm a demon on the basepaths).

If you've made it this far and still care, you might be interested in knowing that it was a great day for The Wife. Shuffled out into right, she was Ichiro-lite, spreading 3 singles around the diamond and scoring each time she was on base (demon. basepaths.). And she's no Sammy Sosa, either, (a fact for which I'm eternally grateful) as her toe may have been turning black, but she still took right each and every inning. What a trooper!

And now is the point where I smoothly transition over to talking about the other team. However, I couldn't come up with an easy way to do this, so this will have to do. Um...so, okay. I've transitioned. As you may have noticed from the title, multiple members of Final Force actually had uniforms on with the words "Final Force" right there on the front. This is the point where words fail me, and we all just move on. To the guy wearing shin guards. In 14" softball. I hope to god he was wearing a cup too, because otherwise I really have to question his priorities. I knew we were in trouble when I saw the uniforms and shin guards, and I was right. I'm very smart.

And so ends another adventure in Fermiball. Join us next week as we take on EuroTrash. Hopes and high for victory #1. Go 'Nuts!

My current stat line: 5-11, a triple, 5 runs scored, 4 RBIs
The Wife: 4-8, 2 walks, 3 runs scored.