The tao of softball

This post is about fate, karma, change, chance and the physics of force, speed and momentum. I'm not talking about the big universe of supernovas and shooting stars. I'm talking about the universe contained on a green diamond between two baselines, one of the most deceptive simple places on Earth, but one that contains constellations of events that Einstein himself couldn't tame. There are places that boggle the mind, because they are both real and magical at the same time. Venice is one; your neighborhood softball field is another.

This weekend, the JV girls team at my school traveled to Doha, Qatar, to play a tournament with five other international schools in the region. We went last year and got third. We went this year and took fifth (even though we were the only ones to beat the team who came in first). The fact was, we had lost our experienced pitcher, and a single season is not long enough to train another, given the number of regular-season games before the tournament (three, two of which we won). Standings and scores, however, are almost beside the point when discussing softball. As a coach, I know I'm supposed to want to win. And I do want to win, because winning is more fun than losing if that is the paradigm on the table. But this weekend, I was blown away by the beauty of the game well before the match that decided our last-place ranking.

My love of softball reaches back to elementary school and an early appreciation of a single basic truth: Softball is a game of skill, strategy and strength, like all sports. And softball is so much more than muscle mass and a good playbook, which is where the magical part comes in. In softball, anything can happen, and often does. The weakest player can tower above the greats in the blink of an eye. A whole game can turn on a butterfly effect, like the centimeters that separate a foul from a base hit or a ball from a strike. After practice is over, pep talks given, warm ups completed and the game begins, all a player or a coach can do is sit back and watch it unfold.

I most love the small moments, the hero moments, like our right fielder catching a ball up against the fence to prevent a grand slam: the crack of the bat, the endless arch of the long ball, the collective intake of breath from both dugouts...then the reach of the glove and the look on the face of a struggling player who realizes what she has done. It's a scene that's been rhapsodized and romanticized by writers and filmmakers through the years until it seems a cliche to non-fans--and yet I promise you, Hollywood technicolor cannot touch the true victory of such a moment. I would argue strenuously that no other sport so graciously distributes access to pure triumph. Softball throws open the curtain and allows anyone to step into the spotlight normally reserved for superstars.

It's no accident, then, that baseball and softball are common metaphors in the American narrative fueled by a rabid belief in progress, achievement and hope, along with a dash of kooky optimism. That the game is pretty much confined to the New World, and not just philosophically, is clear as a coach of an international-school team where some of the girls have been playing since kindergarten, and others aren't quite sure which base is which. One of my favorite players, however, is a sophomore and a native of Spain who is so thoroughly European that she threw a fit when I told her my shoe size was 8 1/2 rather than 38 (the Euro version). Yet she has played this most American of sports since 6th grade (having learned it here) and wouldn't dream of skipping a season. She also leaps into the air to catch a fly ball, regardless of her field position, jumping toward it, even as it races to her. It's a technique that lends itself to graceful plays, along with the occasional dramatic miss. Softball, however, is not a game where you tell your players to stop moving toward the ball, regardless of how artistically they choose to do it.

I returned to school today and had to face the questions, from the athletic director as well as other competitive sorts. In the league my school is in, last-place finishes are not common occurrences, and no one expected us to lose (including us, obviously). We'd had the best season in a long time. I understand the impulse, and tried not chafe. For competitive people, it's embarrassing to come in at the bottom. It makes me sad, though. I couldn't rewind to the moments that would allow them to move past the many walks of our rookie pitchers and arrive at our victories. The catches and leaps. The physics of tag outs, slides and line-drive shots. The confluence of fate and skill that leads, time and time again, to Possibility with a capital p. For me, the magic contained in those moments transcends the outcome. I wouldn't trade it for the world.