Fall League Softball

Last night a friend asked me to fill in for his Fall League softball team. The game would cut into the start of the Yanks/Angels game but I decided to play anyway. As I pulled up in my customary fashion (that is two minutes before game-time)...I walked over to be greeted by a number of former teammates from our legendary Kingston City League Arc Pitch Softball team - the Laidlaw Killer Bees.

Yes, the infamous group of young kids who pulled up on a yellow school-bus a half-hour before gametime one early Summer evening, with our player/coach stepping off the bus and announcing to a stunned audience and paused softball game "The Champs is here." he then pressed play on the boom-box he held over his right shoulder and Juelz Santana repeated the phrase as we filed off the bus and 10-run ruled the first 5 or so opponents we faced.

Anyway, as I stood around bs'ing while the other team was on the field warming up, the guy making the lineup told me to swing a bat I was leading off. So I grabbed a bat stepped up, swung at the first pitch, roasted the right fielder and trotted around the base-paths for an in-the-park home run.

Normally this is of no merit and it really isn't anyway, but you had to see the guy I hit it off of. First, the guy was elder middle-agred, balding and out-of-shape. In other words, the prototype franchise pitcher for any city league softball team. He had an impressive arsenal too: throwing the fake pitches, throwing from way behind the mound, spinning the ball every which way; he had a curveball and a screwball (legitimately curved as I found out in a later at-bat), a front-spinner and a back-spinner.

Of most interest however, occurred after two of our batters fouled out (league rules state that a foul ball with two strikes is a strikeout)...after each strikeout, this man turned his back to our bench which revealed his jersey "number" to be a backwards "K". His name? "You Got Cha'd" And after each foul out he pointed to it with the pride most exhibit after a long home-run.


Unfortunately for Mr. Cha'd I knocked him and his bullshit pitches around to the tune of a 6-6 night with a homer, triple, four singles and even drew a walk. 22-8 final, Who really got Cha'd?