Misnomer

Softballs are not soft. I know this for two reasons.

First, I caught one with my bare hands. The below picture was taken just milliseconds before a softball unloaded all its kinetic energy into the palm of my hand.



















I’m supposed to begin teaching my science class soon about spongy bone and how it helps our bodies absorb forceful impacts, especially forceful impacts with hard surfaces. Perhaps spongy bone is like a glove. I wasn’t wearing a glove, so my palm smarted a lot when a line drive smashed into it. Maybe I’ll just tell kids that spongy bone is like the glove I wasn’t wearing when I played softball. Boy are we thankful for spongy bone.

Second, I broke a wooden bat by hitting the same softball. The side of the bat I used had something like “GIGANTIC BAT” printed on it in huge letters and “Official Little League” scrawled in cursive you could barely make out with a magnifying glass just underneath that. In other words, this was the hugest bat any normal-sized 11-year-old would ever need. I’m somewhat older than that and probably should have learned my lesson moments earlier when a seventh-grade girl used this bat to hit a ball so hard that it nearly took my hand off.

Perhaps my best use for this bat would have been to practice bunting against high-arching, slow-pitched softballs, but bunts don’t tend to impress seventh-grade boys, so I swung for the fences, which, since there really were no fences, probably meant I was trying to knock the ball into the oncoming herd of sheep and cattle, which probably would have spooked these unassuming livestock and perturbed their shepherd.



















Softball is not a priority in North Africa. Perhaps that’s a good thing.