My Fix
I've recently been fascinated that baseball players spit so much and that fastpitch softball players seriously need better batting coaches. I just watched a female softball player spit, grab her crotch and "adjust", and then spit two more times. Oh wait, she just "adjusted" herself again. I'm puzzled now, because she's not wearing a cup and if I remember my 10th grade biology, there's no "adjusting" involved for her. She is wearing batting gloves, so maybe it's a nervous tic because she can't bite her fingernails. The spitting thing is still a curiosity to me. Both, baseball and softball players can produce these tiny spitballs like they're biting the ends off of Q-tips. It's not sunflower seeds, because those fly all over the place when they spit them out.

No, these are tiny little saliva snowballs that are produced at near Tourette-like frequency. I went outside the other day to experiment with this type of spitting and I wound up looking like a rabid squirrel. I must lack a spitting gene, because I've never been able to spit. I produce drool without the ability to propel it from my mouth with any formidable velocity. I think I've deprived myself so much of my life because I was a "drooler" in my formative years. I worked so hard at denying the release of saliva to prevent social rejection, that I never nurtured the importance of spitting well. I guess I'll just have to take solace in my the ability to enunciate, communicate through written correspondence, and leave spitting to the professionals.

My baseball fix is getting fulfilled this week by the softball college world series, but there are some peculiarities that are tripping me up from fully enjoying this sport. As the WNBA is to dunking, fastpitch softball is to homeruns. Okay, forget homeruns, just the ability to drive the ball. Okay, forget driving the ball, just hitting the ball. Pitching has dominated every game I've watched so far and I've seen maybe one or two hitters on every team that appears capable of holding onto the two and a half-pound bat. The commentators try to explain this with relativistic physics by saying because the ball only has to travel 43 feet and averages around 50 mph, then that's the same as trying to hit a 90 mph fastball. I think that's getting a little loose with the physics to help them get to sleep at night and live with a hole in their swing that you could drive a dump truck through. A "hole in your swing" refers to any pitch that you can't consistently hit, meaning you can't hit a curveball or a slider.

The "hole" is, amazingly, over the middle of the plate for fastpitch softball players. The most popular pitch in fastpitch is the Riser and out of 100 pitches, it's probably thrown 70 times. It's basically a fastball that gains elevation as it approaches the strike zone. That's called a bad pitch in baseball. Hitters in baseball live for the chance to see a high fastball. In fastpitch, it's the bane of every hitter.

College fastpitch does have it's saving graces and there are things I like about the game. Their enthusiasm for their team is quirkily infectious, their defensive play is excellent, and they have a inviting game commentary. They allow the novice viewer into the game by sharing the nuances of the sport, factoids about the players, and some of their school traditions. I'm a total sucker for useless information, so they hooked me with the player interviews. It's pretty good entertainment overall and I've always been a fan of female sports. Now someone teach these girls how to hit a high fastball and we got a game!

Okay, sorry, it's over. Michigan beat UCLA in extra innings tonight, which ends the season. Guess I should have posted this a little sooner. : /