Ridgeway, Wisconsin is a hot and humid place in July. The grass is crispy that time of year. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the sun beat down on the little league softball game filled with female students from the local middle school.
It was the event of the weekend for a village of 600 people. Most of the townies attended, watching their daughters, nieces, and neighbor kids in the A team and B team scrimmage.
Truthfully, I was never a particularly athletic kid, and on a day as uncomfortable as this one I wondered why I wasn’t at my PC playing Legoland.
My family valued softball – my mom and her sisters played as kids, my cousins played softball – so to get me excited to play my mom got me my own bat, a brand-new Louisville Slugger.
I had been an outfielder all season because I threw the ball well but was often too scared to catch it, and I was always toward the end of the batting rotation as I was not a capable hitter either.
It was my turn up to bat. I peeled my sweaty body off the bench and waddled to home plate, my new Louisville Slugger in hand, cotton shorts sticking in the wrong places. Little did anyone at the game know this round up to bat for me would change how any of us imagined this afternoon would play out.
Sidling up to the plate, I kicked at the dirt a bit, assumed a batter’s stance and readied myself for a pitch. I could feel the sweaty grit on my palms as I confidently swung at the ball as it left the pitcher’s hand. Strike one. I heard the bleachers chattering behind me. Strike two.
My mom couldn’t make it to this game so I had no one on my side by now. The bleachers were bored of me; my team was over me. I had yet to make a run by this point in the season. Wiping sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand, I took a beat.
Looking back at the pitcher, my neighbor, I got ready to swing on strike three. I placed the bat up in the air behind my right ear, reassuming my batting stance. I saw the ball leave her hand and I swung big. CRACK! The Louisville Slugger made contact and sent the ball in a perfect line drive right back to the pitcher.
She fell back like a sandwich board sign, capsizing from the force of a strong frontal wind as the softball struck her between the eyes before she had a chance to react.
The bleachers gasped.
One lone shriek cried out, “My baby!” The pitcher's parents and coaches rushed the field to examine the unconscious player.
I held my breath, unsure of what to do. Everyone else froze, looking at the pitcher laying in the dirt. I looked around for a social signal. None was given. I had never blasted anyone in the face before, let alone hit a run in a game.
So I did what any 12-year-old girl would do. I ran the bases.
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