1-0 or 0-1?

It was a night for bonfires and stadium blankets, out-of-season sweatshirts and shivering knees, and a vocal but good-natured crowd huddled on aluminum bleachers: what else could it be but a mid-May softball game, the first of the season?

In some ways, except for the fluky weather, it was all as we remembered it. The girls just excited to play. An opposing team which seems to have spent all its practices learning cheers (!) designed to rattle the pitchers and drive us parents insane "all the way to Mexico" (done and done). T-shirt uniforms sponsored by a bank and a dentist and a pizza place and Ashleigh's mom's real estate company. We've--yes, we--have been playing ball on this diamond since first grade t-ball, and some things haven't changed at all.

On the other hand, the fact that the scoreboard no longer seems to work is not the only thing that's different. The girls are growing up and so is their game. The catcher, so fun to watch, hangs tough inning after inning, thanks to those big brothers of hers. I'd swear the star player has not uttered a voluntary word in the four years I've watched her as a player or girl scout or classmate, but that pitch and that swing of hers speak surprising volumes, and I can't help but wonder--already--how things will turn out for her if she lets her skill do the talking. My own player did better than I thought she might--perhaps it's the ritualized cleat-tapping she's somehow acquired-- and I can't help but smile at what a kick she gets out of scoring even when she's walked in.

I'm not sure how this season will go--we seem to have most of the fearsome pitchers, but for some reason our coach was flummoxed that the other team made them pitch and we walked in plenty of runs. Regardless, I intend to enjoy this season for what it is: nearly the end of the not-so-competitive line. Soon enough, the days of everybody plays will be over, and because that may mean my days in the stands are over, too, I'm a little ambivalent. But, notice I never said anything about non-competitive: what's the point in that? Softball is a sport: while the point is how you play the game, somebody does win, and somebody does lose. And somebody really needs to fix that scoreboard.