The Home Run

I'm sitting here, watching the home run derby, and it's boring me.

Over at River Ave Blues, one commenter reflected on the first home run he'd ever hit, and everyone filled in with their first home runs and when they started playing baseball and the like.

Me?

I played organized softball when I was seven--at that age when the coach pitches and you can't strike out. I was more interested in playing with the dirt in the field than catching the ball.

What can I say, I have an overactive imagination...


I never played organized softball after that, but I did go to camp every summer, from when I was nine to when I was fifteen, and softball was a regularly scheduled activity.

The games tended to just be four innings long. I'd bat towards the bottom of the line up, and would be stuck somewhere out in left field--you know, where you stick the worst fielder in the team.

Most of the time I came up to bat and I would be an easy out. I didn't always strike out--much of the time I'd sort of have a swinging but down the third base line. Sometimes I broke fast enough to be safe at first; most of the time I did not.

One time, however--and there's always one time--it was different.

I don't remember much. I don't remember who was pitching or who was on base or how old I was or what the score was or how many pitches I took or swung at or anything like that.

All I remember:

I hit the ball, and it sounded different.

Real, solid contact.

I thought maybe it was a single, so I ran to first. No one had come up with the baseball--they were still running after it. So I ran to second. Still, no one had it. They were running a long way. So I ran to third. From there, I saw someone waving me home, so, without looking to see where the fielders were or the ball was, I ran home.


To this day, I can't remember where the ball landed.

I can't remember anything about what happened afterwards--only that people looked at me a little differently. How on earth could someone batting maybe .050 hit a HR?

The baseball gods, my friends, work in mysterious ways.



So what about you? Did you ever hit a hR? Do you remember it?