I Miss Eugene

I never thought I would say the above words. Eugene is a nice enough place but let's just say Eugene and I do not agree on much of anything. I think transients are a bad thing, Eugene advertises to the transient demographic that it is a wonderful place to stay. I like to have parks for kids to play in, Eugene likes to have parks for dogs. I tend to think drug use is not a redeeming quality, Eugene prefers that one uses drugs. I could go on and on but you get the picture.

Well, tonight I wish I was in Eugene. That is assuming there is a softball league in Eugene that plays this late into the year. The one thing I learned from Eugene is that sometimes things aren't worth caring about. For me that is city league softball. It is fun to get out there but I will not dive, I will not slide and I do not really care if my team wins. There are far too important things to worry about in a typical week for me to get stressed out over softball. In our city league down here some people live for their city league game each week. They wear pinstriped baseball pants, cleats, fitted baseball hats, batting gloves, etc. Just for reference I wear tennis shoes, no hat, shorts and a long sleeve dri-fit.

Let's cut to the chase. In tonight's game I got completely ran over by a guy in pinstriped baseball pants as he was running the bases. My team has me playing third because the only reason I played varsity baseball was because I could field and throw. My hitting is not so strong. It probably reflects that I am not that strong to begin with but that is not important right now. Said moron in baseball pants at a city league softball game had no reason to run home so he stopped on third base. Knowing this is what he was going to do I did not move from standing on the foul line between third and home in the event of a throw. However, this guy decides that because I am in the base line he will take two or three steps, charge me, shove me and knock me flat on my back. For someone that is not a landscaper or road construction worker I thought the guy went a little too far to prove I was in the baseline. His teammates thought he was a hero and wondered why the umpire would not let him advance to home for my mistake of being in the baseline.

After getting up and realizing my tailbone is going to hurt like crazy tomorrow (why I am writing this now and not going to bed, just trying to delay the inevitable) I said a few things as I am prone to do. I made fun of the guy for caring way too much about city league softball and told the fat guy coaching third base to shutup and think about getting exercise. (Later in the game the fat third base coach guy sprained his ankle running the bases and I reassured him he would be okay since he is in such good shape.) I ashamedly admit to using a bad word at one point when yelling at their bench. It truly is out of character for me and looked even worse because I am playing on my church's softball team. At least it was a word I have seen in the Bible before. Jesus rode one of them on what we celebrate as Palm Sunday in case you cared. Hey, everyone has their faults and I am the first to admit it.

I tell this lengthy story because I know if I played a game in Eugene tonight no one would have cared enough about something so meaningless to make my tailbone's weekend miserable. It does make me feel good that the moron that ran me over has an arm at shortstop that is more suited for a co-ed division, if you know what I mean. If I threw like he did while wearing pinstriped baseball pants at a city league softball game I would probably try to act like a jerk too. It is far more acceptable to be remembered for being a classless punk than it is to throw a softball like my seven-month old daughter throws pacifiers. And you know I let him know I was impressed with his throwing arm, I just couldn't resist myself.