Saturday, August 13, 2005
12:28 PM

The Severe Saga That Is Sixteen-inch Softball.

I played softball last night. It was unlike any other time in which I played softball, though. For many reasons, not the least of which was losing both games of the double-header.

This league is a 16" league and fielding gloves aren't used. For 25 years I have played baseball or softball and have used a glove, enabling me to dive all over the place, making dazzling catches as I slide across the outfield grass. The glove has also made me stare at it viciously when a ball's been hit to me, only to bounce off the leather and not get caught. Like it's the glove's fault. Or the sidewalk's fault when you trip over a raised portion of concrete. But we're human, so we do that often, placing blame on an inanimate object first and then calling ourselves assholes.

The team was comprised of Chicago comedians, most of whom dabbled in comedy while keeping steady day jobs. Many of them were funny but none of them committed to it to the point I had, taking in on the road. That's not to say that I'm funnier because I make a laughable wage doing comedy. It's too say that I've tried to make something happen, throwing caution the wind, and living out of my Geo Prizm in America.

I hadn't seen many of them in years and only heard of the league through an email message board. There, comedians, both novices and veterans, post messages daily about anything from last Tuesday's horrific open mic to asking who wants to buy a cushion-less futon for twenty bucks.

The first week of games I missed because, frankly, I forgot. I worked at Wrigley during the day and farted around while finishing my closing duties. I remembered about the games later that night and cursed myself for being such an irresponsible douchebag. Earlier that week I even showed up for a 1 p.m practice on a Sunday. A Sunday that had temps hovering in the high 90's. I later learned that practice was cancelled but that only a few people were called and no email was posted. Oh well. My heart was in the right place even if no one else showed to play catch.

Yesterday I raced through my closing duties at Wrigley. I focused on getting done in record time, arriving to the park for the 6 p.m. first pitch. A teammate told me at an open mic a few week's back that the team was pretty bad. But that didn't dissuade me. Until he continued and told me it was a 16-inch league.

"Really? Oh man, I didn't know that," I said to Adam, who played catcher last night. "My hands are small and I love using a glove. I don't know about playing now."

But since I had already committed and never had really played in a legendary Chicago 16" league, why not? Besides, I'd be played alongside guys I knew who were professionally funny. How bad could it be?

Bad. Really bad. The worst kind of bad I had ever been privy to.

I raced from my car to the field and of course we were on the field furthest from where I parked. I walked past two other fields with games in progress. Only because of a tall bald-headed comedian named Darren did I know which team was ours. Again, I had no idea who was on the team for sure. And those I did know I hadn't seen in a while, so they could've changed a lot. Gotten fatter or skinnier, grown a ponytail or a beard. Whatever.

My long camouflaged pants, capri-like but not completely gay, were left in the Prizm. I only chose them because my knees were still cut-up from playing softball the Sunday before. The pants went to the middle of my calf and sufficiently covered my knees. It wasn't a matter of if I would slide, but when. And how often.

It was already after 6, so there was no time to go get the pants. I simply kept on the khaki cargo shorts I had worn to work. Like the camo capri's, the cargo shorts were straight outta the garbage. Mom had found them "abandoned on the side of the road." "You mean they were in someone's trash on the street, right mom?"

I wasn't about to buy new shorts for Wrigley just to get chocolate and ketchup all over them. Garbage-picked shorts were fine with me. As were the camo capri's, which, weren't capri's originally. They were made into carpi-like pants presumably because something happened to the bottoms. Whatever the case, I liked them. But after I brought a bag of them and other military clothes - thermal underwear and more long camo pants - up to my place, I realized I would never wear them. I instead gave them to my old roommates John and Erin. A few weeks later I asked to have back the capri pants to bring to Iraq. I emailed the booker of the tour to ask if camo pants on a civilian, even one who was bringing the soldiers laughs, would be embraced my the military.

"They don't really like that," he replied. "They feel it's part of their uniform and we're kind of mocking them by wearing their colors over there." So the capri's stayed in Chicago while I was in Iraq and Kuwait.

The cargo shorts in last night's game had no buttons. Not a one. The fly was all buttons and was kept closed with my belt. While at work I further secured them by tying my apron below the belt as the second line of defense. But in this league, there were no aprons or gloves allowed.

Brian, the team captain, announced the lineup a minute after I arrived. Playing right field and batting sixth were my duties for the night.

"Here's some jerseys," Brian said," handing me a plastic grocery bag containing three shirts. Numbers 10, 12 or 15 were my options, all size XL. I went with 12. Why? I have no idea, although right at that moment I remembered that Wade Boggs, who sang at Wrigley earlier this week and is a 2005 Hall of Fame inductee, wore 12 with the Yankees. But realistically, it was totally a random selection. Plus Boggs couldn't hack his hair loss and received a transplant a few years back. I can't support a guy like that. As if the baldness made him feel so badly about himself that he needed to hide his thinning mane. What about the millions of dollars he earned playing a child's game, while shining his World Series ring a dozen times a day. I'd love to be bald and rich. One at a time for me I guess.

I'm sure fellow bald man and '05 HOF inductee Ryne Sandberg called him on it, too. "I still can't believe you gave in like that. Look at that fake rug. Hair from your ass is now on your head. What an asshole. I mean asshead."

The jerseys were shit brown in color with yellow numbers on the back and "Wolfhounds" across the front in cursive. I didn't know the significance of the colors or the name. I was just happy to be playing ball and wearing a jersey.

I found the color scheme bitter-sweet. As a freshman in high school I was cut from the baseball team, which featured the same colors. Sure I made the team as a sophomore, but we had merged with the all-girls school and changed colors. I wanted to be part of the storied tradition that was Joliet Catholic High School, not Joliet Catholic Academy. JCHS was brown, gold and white while JCA was brown, blue and white.

At 15, my heart was crushed and I was left wishing great misfortune on the team. I watched some practices and hoped I would see someone get hit in the face with a line drive. Not killing him or anything, just making his nose look like Gonzo's. I even put some tuna and broccoli on their bus when they played north of Chicago, almost a 2-hour ride. I made sure it sat for a few days and was pungent enough to stop traffic and make the whole team puke on each other. No need to get mad, just even.

Since none of the Chicago comedians had ever seen me play, putting me in rightfield was expected. In softball, whether 16 or 12-inch, just like in little league, the douchebaggitty, shittiest player goes there. But in softball you can angle yourself to hit the ball to right, hoping to catch the defense off guard. So I didn't feel that bad.

Until I saw the rest of our defense. Although some people made plays, we were offensive on defense and even more offensive on offense. Balls were dropped like it was a collection of New Year's Eve celebrations gone terrible awry. Throws were made that would've garnered a chuckle from even The Bad News Bears. It was only the first inning and I already wondering what had I gotten myself into.

Since there were three fields at the park, some of the outfielders overlapped. Let me re-word that. Some of the outfielders sat in each other's lap. It was ridiculous. I was in rightfield looking in and all I saw was the face of the leftfielder from not only another team, but from the other game going on directly behind me. I heard them hit the ball and had to watch the eyes of the leftfielder to see if I needed to move or not. I turned and looked as much as possible, hoping not to miss anything hit to me. When I moved and couldn't see their leftfielder and heard the ball hit, I immediately ducked as if the ball was coming at me. It always sounded like a solid hit, but was highly deceiving as the ball was grounded to their pitcher.

My first at-bat was my only at-bat in Game 1. Yep, I hit sixth and has a single plate appearance, grounding to shortstop and being easily gunned out at first.

"This is the best team in the league," some of my teammates alerted me. "They are the 2-time defending league champions." Like that was supposed to ease the pain of the neophyte fielding and unbelievably bad base running. Who tries to take second on an error at first? Especially when the ball's a few inches away from first and you're trailing by 2 touchdowns? Us.

We lost 23-0. I don't think we had a runner even reach third. The only time I came close to hitting third was throwing a ball there, which was booted and allowed more runs to score.

It was the worst effort I had seen in quite some time. We lost the Game 2 21-0.