Stop the Bear

Many of my '70's softball Maulers’ wildest games were against the Addison Freeloaders, a team that did very well in State and National tournaments.

On one occasion they brought a guy named The Bear, and when he strode to the plate I could see why. The guy had a very thick torso without an ounce of fat, and almost as much bodily hair as the Wolf Man (my mind's eye is imagining a wriggling salmon clenched between his teeth). His practice swing blew the caps off the heads of our infielders (while the wind was blowing in). I am thinking maybe I should just walk this freakin beast?

Of course pride dictated that I had to try to get the guy out, so I nervously pitched to him and of course he smokes a line drive directly at my right hip. I instantly found out that it is true that just before imminent death your life flashes before your eyes and time almost stands still, giving you time to ponder. If I try to get a hand on this drive (remember this is 16 inch no gloves), it will simply remove my hand from my arm. But I cannot just chicken out and let the liner go thru, so I instinctively moved my arm out a little further to let the ball strike my forearm instead of my hand.

If I had not been wearing spikes, the impact would have spun me around like a top, but the spikes held, so it only moved me a quarter turn, and luckily the ball bounced straight down and up. Returning to regular action speed, I tried to act cool and nonchalant by fielding the bounce and tossing the ball to first. My toss seemed soft and easy, but it was as hard as I could throw it due to the force of the blow rendering my arm almost useless.

The expressions on the faces of the Freeloaders was priceless, a scene frozen in time, with all jaws dropping including The Bear’s, (thus allowing the salmon to escape and flop away) while I tried to look even cooler by putting my hands on my hips and forcing a smile by gritting my teeth to mask the pain. I only had enough arm strength left to somehow manage to get one more pitch close to the plate, and luckily the next batter swung at the first pitch and made the third out. Needless to say, all my high fives from then on were left handed.

As soon as I got to the bench I hid behind everyone where no one else could see, and rolled around on the ground clutching my arm and cussing myself for trying to play hero and not diving out of the way instead. Of course I was quickly notified that we went down 1-2-3, so I had to stop rolling around and cussing and take the field again, so I strutted out there trying to act nonchalant like nothing happened, while again forcing a smile by gritting my teeth, although it may have been a tipoff that my right forearm had swollen like Popeye’s, contrasted to my other arm looking like Olive Oyl’s. At least its condition was upgraded from useless to somewhat functional.

The second coolest part was after the game some of the Freeloaders (who never saw me rolling around behind the dugout) were heard to mumble maybe this guy must be pretty tough to stop a shot like that so we should not mess with him, which is pretty funny because if they only know the truth, each of them were probably capable of breaking me in half, except for The Bear who could simply use me as a replacement for the next salmon.

Just goes to show, it is better to be lucky than good.