... that I'm a baller?

A church softballer, that is.

I am not an athletic person (understatement of the year), but I have always loved baseball.  It started back in the 90's when my dad would take us all to Dodgers games and we would root for Mike Piazza and Eric Karros.  He even nicknamed me Mondi after Raul Mondesi... I still am not sure why.  To this day, I am a Dodgers fan... even if I don't follow them or know any of the recent players and also like the Giants.  Get over it.

I actually played softball for three seasons in elementary school.

My glove is twice the size of my head and my uniform is 300 sizes too big.  I am adorable.

I used to love to pitch, but quickly reverted to catcher when I realized that I stunk.  I hit lots of home runs, and my mom kept all of the softballs to prove it.  Okay, I was 9 and the infield was like 3 feet deep, but a homerun is still a homerun people!!  They gave me trophies!!!  I was awesome!!!

In college, my friend Andrew (a fellow Camarilloite) and I used to get together and just go play catch.  He had an old glove that he would let me use, and we'd just play catch for hours at any park we could find.  I was one of the lucky girls that never got hurt by this activity (he knocked out several girls' teeth with baseballs, including his now wife) and it has always been a fond memory of mine.

Several months ago, Matt came home with a baseball glove for me from DI saying, "Now we can play catch!"  And it has sat in our basement ever since.  Until now.

Our Stake has a softball team, and the director asked Matt to run softball for him while he was out of town last week.  So being the lovely, supportive wife that I am, I went with.  And I actually played!  And had fun!

That's right, I totally played with the big boys.  Which means I stood in the outfield between two other men where I was SURE the ball would never come to me... except for one inning where something came over me and I decided to stand next to the designated pitcher and cover the infield because no one else was standing there.  WHAT WAS I THINKING??????  Luckily, the ball didn't even come to me and I didn't touch it once.  Because if anyone had actually tried to throw it to me, I would have probably peed my pants.  I was also terrified of striking out, but I batted anyway and even got on base!  Once.  I was thrown out twice.  And I'm pretty sure I looked ridiculous both times cause for some reason I was really scared that the 1st baseman would not catch the ball and it would hit me.  And I might have screamed a little bit.  I'm such a girl.

It was fun to be outside playing, even if I barely played at all (I ended up just sitting out the last few innings) and I'm sure the rest of the team thought I was completely useless.  It reminded me of why I love baseball.  And summer.  And America.

I love baseball!