New thing: Go to the Batting Cages
File under: things you didn't know you didn't know. I have learned that, at the age of 33, I do not know how to work a baseball glove. In my (not so athletically inclined) mind, a baseball glove is the baseball version of a boxing glove, meant to protect your delicate little palm from objects flying at you at the speed of something that flies really fast. Hey, news flash: IT IS NOT. The more you know.
This is a cheat post because I didn't actually go to the batting cages. But I went to the park, where my friend, equipped with a reusable grocery bag full of softballs and an aluminum bat, proceeded to educate me on the finer points of hitting. And for the low, low price of zero quarters! (Apparently the batting cage takes quarters. Which I'd know if I'd ever been there.) So it went like this: He pitched balls. I hit some. I missed some. A lot. I swung at stuff no self-respecting hitter would ever swing at. Then he would hit balls. He had to pitch to himself- what am I, some kind of wizard? I would field the balls he hit. Until I actually nearly caught one, using the glove, like a boss. Only not like a boss because it turns out there is a way to catch a ball using a glove and a way not to do it and my way is the way not to do it and I'm pretty sure I broke my palm and I'll never palm anything again. Now I almost definitely won't fulfill my dream of becoming a Harlem Globetrotter.
Alright, so maybe I didn't technically break my palm. But it did hurt. I couldn't even hit any balls after that because just swinging and missing hurt too much. I'm pretty sure actual contact with a ball would have been more than I could take.
I can only imagine I would have been less injured if I'd really gone to the batting cage, because at the batting cage, the ball machine (pitching machine?) doesn't ask to you field balls for it. But it also wouldn't have cost zero dollars and I wouldn't have been able to be smug about the fact that I was running around in a t-shirt, playing sports outside. In December. Yay, Tucson.
This is a cheat post because I didn't actually go to the batting cages. But I went to the park, where my friend, equipped with a reusable grocery bag full of softballs and an aluminum bat, proceeded to educate me on the finer points of hitting. And for the low, low price of zero quarters! (Apparently the batting cage takes quarters. Which I'd know if I'd ever been there.) So it went like this: He pitched balls. I hit some. I missed some. A lot. I swung at stuff no self-respecting hitter would ever swing at. Then he would hit balls. He had to pitch to himself- what am I, some kind of wizard? I would field the balls he hit. Until I actually nearly caught one, using the glove, like a boss. Only not like a boss because it turns out there is a way to catch a ball using a glove and a way not to do it and my way is the way not to do it and I'm pretty sure I broke my palm and I'll never palm anything again. Now I almost definitely won't fulfill my dream of becoming a Harlem Globetrotter.
Alright, so maybe I didn't technically break my palm. But it did hurt. I couldn't even hit any balls after that because just swinging and missing hurt too much. I'm pretty sure actual contact with a ball would have been more than I could take.
I can only imagine I would have been less injured if I'd really gone to the batting cage, because at the batting cage, the ball machine (pitching machine?) doesn't ask to you field balls for it. But it also wouldn't have cost zero dollars and I wouldn't have been able to be smug about the fact that I was running around in a t-shirt, playing sports outside. In December. Yay, Tucson.
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