Softball season: opening day

After a one-week delay because of rain, our team's softball season finally got started. And, as is the case for us, we drank more beers than the other team scored runs.

That's the usual for us (though apparently we need to score runs as well). Our name is Two Drink Minimum, for heaven's sake.

The primary motive for us playing softball is to have a few beers and have a good time (haha, a near typo, as I almost wrote 'a good team'). People say it's a lot more fun when you're winning, but we challenge that every time out.

So, form followed its normal course and we got crushed on Thursday. But we cleared out the beer cooler and had a lot of laughs.

Apparently we were playing the league runner-up from last year, who, generally, seemed to take things a lot more serious than us (not that that's really hard). Like the pitcher was throwing all kinds of garbage; I was concerned that he was going to throw his back out with some of the contortions on his follow-through.

That kind of stuff kills me. Like you have to put all kinds of goofy spins on the ball to get us out. (For the record, I was 1 for 3 with an RBI. On my third AB, I grounded into a 6-4 fielder's choice; but on running out of the box, I dropped the bat and the knob landed squarely on my ankle - the little bump that sticks out. Damn that hurt, and it's still sore. I should be able to avoid a DL stint, however.)

And furthermore, it's beer league softball. It's competition, certainly, but the World Series it ain't. (And beer-league softball is all about long homers anyway, not the pitchers.)

But in truth, wins and losses don't matter as much as they might have at other points in my life. I enjoy all of my teammates, and I enjoy taking the field with them and I enjoy sharing a beer and a laugh with them. Playing with them actually kind of fulfills a dream for me.

When I was a young'n, I visited DC with my mom and dad. We did all of the tourist-y stuff, including seeing as much and as many of the Smithsonians as we could. Getting from one to the other requires walking across the National Mall.

I remember walking on those stone pathways when I was little, watching older people play softball on the Mall. That struck me as about the coolest thing ever; making a throw to first in the shadows of the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument; to play a game in the shadows of two structures that most Americans might see in person a handful of times in their lives.

And now I'm one of those people playing the game.

Win or lose, I'm living a dream. And drinking cold beer on top of it, too.