Spring and softball

I love spring. I love the warmer but not too hot weather and all the flowers and trees blooming. Mostly I love spring because it means the beginning of baseball and softball season.

Wayne and I love Cardinals baseball and catch the games when we can. I just had my first softball game Thursday night. Wayne plays on Friday nights and started pitching this season, and pitched a great game this past Friday. I am playing on two teams this season (Mondays and Thursdays...Monday was rained out), despite Wayne’s wish for me to only play one night because he has such a hard time with Trinity. I wasn’t able to play much past the first half of last season due to the pregnancy, and I haven’t been to any practices yet this season, so I was a little nervous about how rusty my skills were. Fortunately, I have been giving fastpitch pitching lessons for the past two months, so my arm has been worked out several times. However, I was right to be nervous about rusty skills, at least offensively. I fouled out three times. Not good. Defensively I was solid, though, which I am pretty happy about.

Speaking of pitching lessons, I love giving them, especially when I see results. The girl I am teaching is mostly a beginner, but she knew the basic mechanics when we started. After 8 lessons, she has significantly improved her mechanics, which has led to a faster fastball.

We had another lesson today after a rough session last week. I gave her some things to work on through the week to help her help herself improve. Apparently this is paying off in ways I couldn’t have foreseen. For example, today I noticed that she can throw her fastball as a drop pitch. This is FREAKING AWESOME! The first time she threw it today both her parents and I had to pick our jaws up off the floor because the ball literally looked like it dropped off the edge of a table, and it was over the plate. I think this pitch is similar to what is called a peel drop pitch, but I haven’t taught her that (yet). I showed her how to throw a turnover change-up (although, admittedly, way earlier than I should have) which drops quite nicely when thrown correctly, so I thought maybe she was turning her wrist over when she snapped the ball, but that wasn’t the case. Whatever it is, I am all for it. Every good pitcher needs a good drop pitch. So I was very excited to see this naturally from a pitcher I am coaching.

I love softball.