SPORTS VIEW: MUSCLING UP DEFINES GAME OF SLOW-PITCH

About 10 years ago, I stepped into the laid-back world of slow-pitch softball.

It took some getting used to. After years of playing baseball, slow-pitch slowed my blood. It obviously requires a lower degree of physical skill, not to mention mental sharpness.

The ball is big and it goes slow. The runners are anchored to bases. Bunting is prohibited. The fields are smaller; more navigable for non-athletes.

Some people call them "Beer Leagues."

Hitting is the name of the game in slow-pitch, and in the beginning, my role as a hitter was clear. Lacking height and girth, I became one of the guys who hit singles; mostly to the opposite field.

If I dared to muscle up, a medium flyout to left field generally resulted.

But home runs are the measure of a man in slow-pitch, and they create excitement, so I aspired to hit them like my power-hitting teammates Jim and Leonard, who hit four or five a session.

A few years went by, a few pounds went on, and my attempts at hitting for power occasionally began to reap rewards. If I hit one just right, I could plug the gap or one-hop the fence. Maybe once in a season, I even cleared the fence.

Then, two years ago, a significant change occurred. My bat suddenly had more spring. The ball traveled farther. Every swing was a swing for the fences, and quite a few made it there.

My power binge carried over to this season, when at long last, I reached my goal of five home runs in a session.

When I arrived, however, the standard had changed. With most teams, including ours, hitting lively "50-core" balls and swinging bats constructed of a space-aged polymer formerly outlawed by most softball associations, five home runs didn't mean what it once did.

My four home run total was barely considered average. Twelve was the new standard in what turned into "The Summer of Jim and Leonard," and 20 didn't seem to be out of the question.

If one of them wasn't hitting one, it was the other. They hit home runs every night. Sometimes two or three.

And almost everybody, it seemed, was hitting a couple per session.

Don't get me wrong. We enjoyed it, and we certainly felt better about ourselves when we were hitting balls out of the park.

But we also recognized that the game we played had changed, maybe for the worst.

"Nobody hits to right field anymore; everybody just goes up jacking," Jim lamented one day in the midst of his hot streak. "I'll throw a good pitch to a little guy, and he'll hit it out. Good defense doesn't even matter anymore."

I agreed, but I pointed out that slow-pitch is a hitter's game after all. Baseball is about speed and defense, hit-and-runs and strategy. Why just look at this year's Little League World Series, or this year's College World Series, or the current Major League Baseball season...

On the other hand, maybe those aren't the best examples.

Anyway, Jim and I got our wish a couple of weeks after our discussion. We subbed for a team at a complex that used a comparatively soft "47-core" softball. After a few connections as solid as a cardboard tube whacking a bag of laundry, our egos had been sufficiently trampled.

It was a good, close game, but it wasn't the same. Frankly, it made me look bad.

Just imagine if the fences at the Little League World Series were scooted back 20 or 30 feet, so that the kids would have to chase long fly balls rather than turn and watch them leave the yard 10 times in a six-inning game.

Just think how it would be if the souped-up aluminum bat ripping clothes-line homers was replaced by an old-fashioned, stretch-a-single-into-a-double ash.

Just try to go back to the ball they used to play with in Major League Baseball before the strike.

Nope. Won't happen.

It wouldn't be the same game.

Kip Christianson is a sports writer for the Southeast Missourian