BACK ON THE FIELD OF PLAY

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Ah, it’s good to see softball season roll back around.

For one thing, it’s been months since I have walked with a limp.

Since reaching the age of 30, I have greatly curtailed my sporting activities. Well, it’s not that age 30 was some singular, life-defining event. It just happened that my 30th birthday came a few days after I had engaged in some sport, and I could barely walk that day.

I used to be in great shape. I could run for hours on end, and physical contact was a brilliant and exciting friend of physical exertion. Getting banged up and bruised was cool. I remember one time having a bruise on the back of my thigh that was the identical shape of a cleat. I proudly showed that puppy to everyone, which in retrospect was probably somewhat uncomfortable for others: “Hey, check out this bruise – hang on, let me get my pants off.”

But as the years have gone on, the bruises have been slower and slower to heal. Additionally, the more and more inappropriate it becomes for me to remove my pants in public. I have told you on many occasions that it was getting time for me to stop playing sports. And, each time, I have healed up just enough to keep playing. And each time after that I whine and complain to you, the good readers, because I am forbidden to whine to my wife. It was actually part of our wedding vows.

But last year, when someone approached me about playing in a winter soccer league, I thought about it for a while and decided that, contrary to my very manly instinct, I was going to pass. It hurt me to have to miss a season of sports. I had played sports year-round for most of my life. This hurt bad. Not nearly as bad as my ankle, shoulder, entire left side and both feet, which had been sore for roughly two decades.

I decided that, of all of the sports I enjoy, softball was my favorite. Softball, after all, brings together brilliant spring weather with America’s pastime: drinking beer. And it’s also somewhat like baseball, which I hear is also American.

So I went through the entire winter without doing a single athletic endeavor. When the dark days of winter began to wear off, I was excited about getting my life back on the field of play. During my hiatus, most of my soreness had gone away, and I could step out of bed in the mornings without screaming and falling back to the bed, flailing my arms just in case my wife didn’t completely grasp the sheer volume of pain I was experiencing. Granted, the downside, of course, was that without sports I had put on a slight amount of weight, and was now tipping the scales at around 700 pounds.

Kidding, of course. I had actually lost a few pounds, which just proves my point: sitting on the couch for months on end is a good diet.

But I digress.   When the first practice of softball was finally upon me, I was very excited. For the first time in recent memory, my body actually felt pretty good. I could actually start off a season without wearing any braces or wraps. As I strode up to the softball field, I felt confident that this would be the season to end all seasons. This, after all, would be the season that I came into fully healthy and in tip-top physical shape.

And can you guess what happened next? “Gee, Mike, you twisted your ankle or got hit in the eye with a ball, or a hawk came and scalped you or some other freak injury that otherwise disabled you.”

Wrong. Nothing happened. Ankles are in tact. Knees feel good. The muscles are a little sore, but that’s only because I’m trying to shake off the atrophy. It’s a good pain, I assure you. It’s a pain that goes away.

I hope.

Granted, I have only practiced one day, so I probably shouldn’t start the I’m Invincible campaign just yet. But to start out a season of sports without injury is top notch.   Maybe it was good that I took that time off. Maybe that was all I needed to get back on track. Maybe I should call it quits after one practice.