I stepped away from drama and author duties today to coach my softball team in our final tournament of the year.

We won both of our games (5-4) and (33-0).

The score of the last game might stand out a little bit. It was one of the stranger and most excruciatingly painful games I had ever been involved with. What made it all the more odd is that this was a team just two short years ago was our nemesis-we could never seem to beat them.

That’s all even now, I guess.

It became obvious that it would be a blow-out shortly into the top of the first inning when we were batting. After all nine batters had batted twice, and all had scored, I knew I had to change some strategies. I had to figure out how to make three outs.

I know that’s a bizarre thing for a coach to say, but like I said, it was 18-0 and we still didn’t have any outs.

We made our first out at 23-0. My daughter caught looking on a strike-three – bless her heart. She was finally catching on to my strategy.

I upped the ante. I then told the girls that if any of them walked, that they had to run a lap. I was serious. Swing. At anything. I also told the girls that I given them 1RM if they made an out.

Amanda did. She swung at a ball that bounced. The problem was she got a basehit on it. We could do no wrong. Susan began swinging at everything but even she couldn’t strikeout successfully because invariably the catcher would drop the ball and there was no way to get her out after that.

Christy had the most hilarious at bat. She purposefully struck out badly, but the catcher didn’t catch the ball. So Christy walked in front of home plate a few feet, waiting for the catcher to tag her out. Christy had turned around and was waiting for the catcher to complete the  putout. The catcher did. Except that as the catcher tagged Christy, the ball popped out back to the ground. Christy, dumbfounded, didn’t know what to do. I finally told her to run to first. She did all she could to make an out.

I eventually approached the umpire to see if we could just switch sides without getting a third out. He said we could not.

So finally, Jane sealed the deal by striking out after our 33 run had crossed the plate.

We had batted for one hour. We took the field and my daughter struck out the first three batters she faced.

Time of game. A one-inning, one hour game had come to its end.

We’ll be back tomorrow. Here’s hoping for some better competition.