take me out to the ball game

When I was a kid, I was pretty hot stuff on the softball field. The summer after sixth grade was my last year on the team, but I was a superstar pitcher with a mean underhand. There will always be a softspot in my heart for America's Favorite Pasttime, and if the opportunity arises for me to play in a cheesy adult league at some point in my life, I will probably jump at the chance. In the meantime, I'll have to content myself with attending Mountaineers games and flouncing around the bases of little league fields in the off-hours of the early AM.

Because I was so awesome, I rarely sat in the dugout during softball games. My dugout activities were limited to reading contraband Seventeen magazines at recess and dreaming up exclusive clubs with other catty kindergarteners. The trouble with exclusive clubs in elementary school is that your membership can be revoked without notice at any time--this happened to me twice in my young life.

First, I was elected vice-president of the Babysitter's Club in third grade, but then I started hanging around with the "bad girls" (shooting dice during silent reading, flipping the bird at teachers when their backs were turned, throwing icicles at obnoxious boys) and when I tried to hang out in the sandbox with the rest of the club they informed me that my position had been passed to the next-in-line. I was crushed. And my time on the dark side was short-lived.

The second club I joined was the Pet-Sitter's Club (notice a theme?). My friends R, S & I were hanging out after school one day (the one thing I remember especially about R's house was that we got to play the Carmen Sandiego video game, which was awesome) and, for financial reasons, we decided to create the club. I was elected vice-president (again) by R (the president), which basically just meant she and I were best friends and S was etc. It all came tumbling down about an hour later, when I took a bathroom break and returned to our HQ (R's room) to discover that R & S had been plotting against me--I was booted from my position as VP, and my friendship with R never recovered.

Incidentally, R was the only other person from my elementary school who played on my softball team (it was regional).

I feel kind of like a forties-style pinup in these high-waisted shorts, stripes and hair bow... perhaps I could star in an advertisement for the ladies league that started up when all of the men went off to war?

Also, if our outfits had been this cute, I might have played the game beyond sixth grade:

(Yeah! Everybody loves Madonna and A League of Their Own!)

And, while I'm running the bases, a list of the best baseball movies of all time!

1. A League of Their Own

2. Field of Dreams

3. The Sandlot

4. Bull Durham

5. Fever Pitch

6. For the Love of the Game

7. The Rookie

8. The Fan (creepy!)

And the worst baseball movie ever made:

Summer Catch

Seriously, this movie is so bad. Maybe even the worst movie that Freddie Prinze Jr. ever made--and it's hard to trump that movie about the models and the murder mystery. She's All That should have been that for him, and the only reason that movie was even tolerable was that it was part of the late-nineties teen movie phenomenon that took place right when I hit my teen peak.