I played softball last night. In the fifth inning, I was manning my usual position at third, when the batter skipped a hot grounder to my left. To my credit, I got in front of the ball. To my discredit, the ball hopped over my glove and hit me, instead.


Why did I miss the ball, you ask? Was it a bad hop? Was it because I was already thinking of doubling up the runner on first, before I secured the ball? Was it because I turned my head and squealed, 'Eeeeeeeeee!!' when the ball neared?


I'll leave that call to the historians. The answer probably lies somewhere in between.


At any rate, I gathered the ball, threw to second, and forced the runner. My momentary flub cost us any chance of getting another out at first base, and also cost me a painful *thwack* on my left thigh, where the ball dinged me.


(In the interest of full disclosure, I also suffered what we male person types call a 'brushing', as the ball rattled around my crotchal region. There was contact with the delicates and unmentionables, but no direct hit. Still, it was one of those moments when you think to yourself:


'Hrm, that hurts a little bit. In ten seconds, the pain will either go away, or drive me weeping to the ground in unbridled agony. I wonder which it'll be?'


This time, it went away. One game a couple of years ago, I wasn't so lucky. For the next three months, I wore a frying pan as a 'cup'. I couldn't run very well, but dammit, I was protected.)


The upshot of my fielding foul-up is that I now have an angry, painful bruise on my upper inner left thigh, just a couple of inches below where the 'rubber meets the road', so to speak. I don't notice it much when I'm sitting, but standing or walking brings the ouchie back to life. Each step is like a midget headbutting me hard in the leg, while chanting, 'Watch the ball into the glove... watch the ball into the glove...'.


(I like to take a lesson from every sports-related injury, when I can. It makes me a better player.


Also, I like to describe my injuries using scenarios involving midgets. It takes the edge off the pain. It's like Bactine for the soul.


Poetic, no?)


The worst part of this particular welt is the location. Not because it's a particuarly painful or a sensitive area, but because soreness in that region might usually be expected to develop from something much more interesting. So now, I stand up and feel the pain, and think:


'Ouch. Man, what wild, kinky escapade was I on to hurt... oh, right. Softball. What was I thinking?'


Terribly disappointing, to say the least. What's worse than engaging in a passionate night of wild and acrobatic abandon, then forgetting about it? Not engaging in a passionate night of wild and acrobatic abandon, momentarily thinking that you might have, and then realizing that you didn't. Bitches.


And what's even worse than that?


When I went to bed last night, my thigh was already purpling up and swollen. As I hopped under the covers, my wife -- reading in bed at the time -- noticed the bruise peeking out the bottom of my boxers, and said:


'Ouch. Man, what wild, kinky escapade were you on to hurt... oh, right. Softball. What was I thinking? G'night.'


Clearly, my mystique has faded. Or more likely, was never all that mystiqious to begin with. I'm sure it's healthy that she knows there's only one way I'm likely to get bruised and sore outside the house -- on a court or field, through my own athletic ineptitude.


Still. Doesn't somebody have to believe that this monstrosity came from an activity where the gloves weren't the only things made of leather, and the shin guards weren't for sliding into second? Anyone? Bueller? Hello?

I really shouldn't play softball, ever.


Which is unfortunate, because I'm on three different softball teams this summer. That's a record for me, and it's likely no coincidence that it comes in the first summer after I turned thirty-five. I feel like I'm in Logan's Run; once you're too old and fat and out of shape enough to exercise any other way, they come chasing after you to fit you for a catcher's mitt and a hernia brace. It's a little scary.


(Oh, for you younger kids -- Logan's Run was one of those 'moving picture' shows we used to have before DVDs or pay per view came out. And before any of you smug young healthy bastards were born, either.


You might like it, though -- Basil Exposition was in it, and so was Farrah Fawcett.


Again, for you younger kids -- Farrah Fawcett was what passed for 'eye candy' back then, before whale tails and wardrobe malfunctions. And before internet porn. See why we old geezers are so goddamned bitter now?)


Anyway, it's not the actual softball playing that's a problem. I can hit the ball okay, and I can still make it to first base in a way that looks more like 'running' than 'a clubfooted ostrich having a heart attack'. Marginally more.


I can even flash the glove a little, for a man my age and in my less-than-mint condition. If you hit the ball right at me, that is. Smack it precisely in my direction, and I'll often make a play -- but there's no lateral motion left in these legs, apparently. If the games so far are any indication, I have the fielding range of a three-legged patio chair buried in quicksand. It's not pretty out there, people.


But that's okay. This is not the 'Spring Chicken' league, remember. Most of the guys out there -- we won't bring the girls into any conversation concerning advancing age -- are as old as I am, give or take a couple of rings on the old trunk. We're in that gray(ing) area of the world of Mansport, between sports like soccer and football and basketball on one side, and shuffleboard, gin rummy, and solving the Sunday jumble on the other. In our younger years, we played for the glory; these days, we play so we can hit the bar after the game and drink on a Tuesday night without feeling 'weird' about it. So I guess there's still some 'glory' in it, after all.


Still, I shouldn't be playing softball. Or any team game, for that matter. I shouldn't even be watching my teams play, and that's because I'm no good at cheering. I'm a pep rally's worst nightmare; a rooting train wreck just waiting to happen.


Don't misunderstand -- I want to cheer for my teammates. I try to advise and encourage and morally support them. It just never works out very well. There are basically three things working against me:

• 1. In the thick of a hotly-contested game, my mouth works much faster than my brain.


• B. I have a very smartass-centric vocabulary, with words like 'asstacular' and 'bumblepecker' in heavy rotation.


• III. In the immortal words of Homer SImpson, 'Lord help me, I'm just not that bright.'

So in a situation like, say, when our best hitter's up to bat, and the rest of my team is, quite reasonably, calling out things like:


'Base hit now, base hit!'
or

'Wait for your pitch; nice and easy now!'
or

'Just a little line drive, brother!'


How do I add my support? With this unplanned little gem:


'KNOCK HER UP THE POOPER, MAN!'


Which wasn't at all what I'd intended to say, but it got quite a look from the other team's pitcher. The other team's female pitcher, who I surmised was quite against the idea of being knocked up the pooper. And who could blame her, really?


(Not me, certainly. I would never intentionally suggest that our slugger knock up the opposing pitcher's pooper; it just slipped out that way.


I don't even think he knows the girl, frankly. And pooper knocking's hardly a proper topic of conversation for a first introduction. I read Miss Manners; I know these things.)


Sadly, that featherbrained faux pas fiasco is par for the course. My cheering starts out normal, like everyone else's... and then something happens. I get lost in the moment, forget what I'm saying, and -- just as everyone else conveniently shuts up, of course -- I blurt out some ridiculous nonsense that's neither 'rooting' nor 'rallying'; it's just retarded.


I don't discriminate, either. I've shouted horribly embarrassing non sequiturs in every conceivable game situation. I've asked our pitcher to 'send this batter back to Mrs. Butterworth', informed the infield, with men on base, that we should 'toss a log at the lead beaver', and told our relay man, with the runner at first not tagging, that there were 'no pants on the donkey'. Then there was the time, coaching third on a close play, when I yelled at our runner to:


'Slide! Slide! Like a pirate! Slide!'


To this day, I have no idea what I was trying to say. Maybe (hopefully?) I was asking him to 'hook slide'. Possibly, I was hoping he'd 'swashbuckle' into the bag -- though I'm frankly not sure I'd know swashbuckling if I saw it, nor could I say whether our runner was carrying the necessary equipment at the time. Most likely, I just wanted to hear him growl, 'Arrrrrr!' as he slid into third. At worst, that'd show some team spirit. And at best, the third baseman might think he was being boarded, and abandon ship befor the throw arrived.


That, or he'd think the guy was going to knock him up the pooper, which would probably get him the hell out of the way, too. Either way, somebody on our team was going to score that inning. Maybe my cheering suggestions aren't so bad, after all.

At a softball game last weekend, I slid into third base on a close throw from the outfield.


(I wasn't expecting the throw to come to third, so I hadn't prepared to slide as I lumbered toward the base. So it's probably less accurate to say 'I slid into third base' than to say 'I awkwardly fell to the ground at full sprint and rode an asscheek raft into third base'. Just in case you're scoring at home.)


I was rewarded for my troubles with a long, bright red 'strawberry' on my right undercarriage, just above where the legs of my shorts reach the thigh. In the days since I left bits of my ass on the infield, I've become reacquainted with the various painful stages of stupidity-induced backside abrasions. Which I've now decided to share with you. Don't try and stop me; my mind's made up.


Stage I: All the World's an Ouchie


For the first three days post-skinning, there is no activity you can possibly perform involving your ass that won't hurt.


(I'd like to retract that statement immediately, before the inevitable flood of smartass emails listing activities in which you could conceivably enroll your ouchied ass without discomfort. Because while such things might not cause your rear end any pain, they're guaranteed to keep me awake at night. And not in a good way.)


Let me say this instead: for three days after an ill-advised slide, activities such as lying on your back, reaching for your wallet, running into furniture, or sitting will be very uncomfortable. If you're considering doing 'The Bump' at this stage, you'd better have a high tolerance for pain or an assful of novocaine. And both wouldn't hurt.


The worst part about Stage I is that you know something like, say, sitting in a desk chair is going to hurt. But what choice do you have? None, that's what choice. You've got work to do, and the work's at the desk, so that's where your ass has to park, butt boo-boo or no butt boo-boo. You just have to suck it up, sit gingerly, and think fluffy thoughts until you reach...


Stage II: You Again!


After a few days, you forget that you've scraped your sitter, and you may neglect to 'turn the other cheek'. This is Nature's way of letting you know that you're a plodding slow dumbass, and should have stopped at second base.


(Note: Depending on how you developed your strawberry, Nature may be telling you something slightly different. Like, 'Slip 'n' Slides need water to actually work, jackass' or 'Maybe halfpipe skateboarding's really not your bag, sport'. Nature works in mysterious ways; your message may vary.)


This is the 'gotcha!' stage, when your bum bum only hurts when you forget that it's sore in the first place. So maybe you're grocery shopping, pulling rock-hard burritos out of the frozen food aisle, and absent-mindedly *bump* the freezer door shut -- sending a wave of skinless rump pain shooting through your nervous system and a package of skinless chicken breasts spilling out of your shopping cart.


(I'm not saying that happened to me, mind you. But I wouldn't eat the cacciatore at our house for a couple of weeks, if you know what I mean.)


This 'stealth stinger' phase lasts for a few more days, until most of the posterior pain has subsided for good. This lands you in the even more insidious...


Stage III: What're You Lookin' At?


It's a well-known fact that mostly-healed abrasion wounds tend to itch. Scraped knees, skinned elbows, you name it -- there's something about scabby skin that makes you want to scritch it.


If said wound is located on one's hiney, then one finds one's self in an unfortunate predicament. Spend the day with an itchy ass? Or scratch that moneymaker out in public where all can see and gawk?


Personally, I chose the latter. My moneymaker's never earned me much cash, so I figured I had nothing to lose. Three days of scritching later, it still hasn't generated any dough. But at least I'm walking without a hitch in my step any more. Which means I've careened right into...


Stage IV: History Repeating


If you're like me, you never learn. Not from your mistakes, not from others' mistakes, and not from those scary educational films they showed you in high school. So as soon as your injury heals enough to bother you no more, you're going to go out and do it again.


My rear end's feeling pretty good again these days. No pain, and I haven't felt so much as a tickle back there since the weekend. And I've got another softball game on Thursday. Assuming the game's not called on account of tornadoes or plagues of locusts, I'll be back out there again, running willy-nilly around the bases and sliding like a crack-addled ostrich with a bad case of vertigo. I'm virtually guaranteed to come out of it with another boo-boo. Maybe this time I'll take pictures. Multimedia is all the rage these days, right?

Tonight I was at a softball game. Early in the contest, I was standing by our bench. That's my usual position, though they occasionally let me clear the dirt off the plate between innings, or polish the bats when nobody's using them. Or wash the infielders' cars. I'm a real 'team player' that way. That's what they tell me, at least.


Anyway, on this particular play our runners were careening wildly around the diamond, leading the other team to throw the ball between various bases all willy-nilly. Because this is softball, folks. 'Good fundamentals' are for people who can sprint to first base without having a coronary, or stopping by the visitors' dugout for a chili dog.


As is always the case when a softball play involves more than two high-velocity throws, the ball went sailing up over a glove and out of play. In this case, out of play past third base, rolling past the bench where I was standing, across a sidewalk, and into a dark patch of weeds in an unlit area of the park.


Me being the most expendable closest player, I jogged off to retrieve the ball. Since I couldn't see over there, I was forced to rummage around with both hands, feeling the ground until I located the ball.


Or, in this case, until a guy from the other team came over and said, 'Hey, I see it -- it's over here' approximately three feet from where I was copping a cheap feel from a patch of dirt and weeds.


(I'm guessing it's just this sort of locked-in 'nose for the ball' that keeps me solidly riding the pine on this team. But I'm just happy to contribute -- so long as they supply the Turtle Wax for the bats. And the shortstop's Toyota.


This 'team player' thing sucks ass. I see that now.)


So the other guy throws the ball back to the field -- and leaves me there with two arms wrist-deep in plants that I can neither identify nor clearly see. And one horrific thought leapt immediately to mind:


POISON IVY!


That was followed closely by 'poison oak', 'poison sumac', and several other poison-plant concoctions that I've since learned don't actually exist. There's apparently no such thing as 'poison grass', 'poison dandelions', or even 'poison poseys'.


(Except maybe for Parker Posey, in that stupid, stupid cola commercial. I swear, that godforsaken ad makes Pepsi seem like D-Con. Make it stop. Please.)


Still, the fact remained that I might well have been tainted with the noxious itchy oils of one of Nature's great equalizers. There was no way to know for sure -- and no immediately easy way to wash off my hands as a precaution. I had five more innings of plate-dusting and bat-polishing ahead of me, and no tub full of soapy water in sight. Naturally, the next most obvious thought soon came screaming into my consciousness:


WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T TOUCH YOUR WINKIE!!


You guys know where I'm coming from. The annals of manhood are full of horror stories involving unsuspecting or injudicious gentlemen who've been exposed to poison ivy, and then fiddled with their privates. Whether it's a bathroom break after working in the garden or an unfortunate choice of toilet paper replacement on a camping trip, the outcome is the same. We all know a guy -- or know a guy that knows a guy -- who has endured the infernal sting of the raw red rash on his 'Jolly Rogerer'.


And by far, it's the itchy irritation of the unmentionables that gets the most sympathetic (or empathetic) response from any group of males. You could have horror stories galore about the non-nether-region effects of poison ivy, and you'd barely rate a blip. Consider:


'When I was a kid, my dad fell into a bed of poison ivy, and developed open sores on his hands and arms that lasted for weeks. It was a month before the doctors would let him out of bed or untie his arms to scratch, for fear of infection.'


'Hrm. Any on his wiener?'


'No.'


'Meh.'


Or how about:


'I knew a guy back in high school that burned a bunch of weeds in his yard, but there was poison ivy in there, and he inhaled a bunch of the fumes. The poor guy ended up on a respirator, and now he drinks three meals a day via straw through his nose.'


'Sad story. Did the fumes get his penis?'


'Not... that I know of, no.'


'Eh. He'll live.'


But:


'My old roommate back in college pulled a football out of a shrub during a game, and didn't know that there was poison ivy in there, too. An hour later, he went to pee -- and ended up with poison ivy on his Johnson!'


'Gaaaaaah!! Jesus, that poor bastard. We should take up a collection or something. Imagine being cut down, so early in life. Just... wow.'


Suffice it to say, I didn't get my hands anywhere near my delicates for the rest of the game. And this was softball -- much like baseball, where in-game crotch scratching is damned near an art form, so it wasn't fricking easy. But I did it. Then I came home, and thoroughly scrubbed my hands with soapy hot water, for as long as I could stand it.


And still I didn't dare dip a digit toward my danglies. Frankly, I'm not sure when I'll be able to touch them again. Maybe in three or four months, if no rash forms on my hands, I'll consider it. But you can never be too careful. We've all heard the horror stories -- and we've all crossed our legs and promised ourselves 'that will never happen to me'.


And now my little man is counting on me. I can't possibly let him down. Hang in there, little dude -- I'll see you again next year!


Well, either that or I'll end up doing some pretty unspeakable things with one of our oven mitts.


Either way, this could be the start of a long, cold, itchy winter. And I'm not talking about those wool turtleneck sweaters. Now who's coming over to help with the calamine lotion, eh?

I realized something troubling this week. My softball team is light on the player nicknames.


We're not completely devoid of clever names. We do have a 'Scoop', which is cool. I presume we call him that because of his slick fielding, but nobody seems to know for sure. Maybe he just likes ice cream. Or had a job cleaning litter boxes at a pet store once. It's a mystery.


But apart from 'Scoop', that's about it. When we're not calling each other by our real names -- and how boring is that? -- we resort to dusty old standbys like 'Dude' and 'Batter' and 'Shortstop'. "Nice play, shortstop!" A two-year-old could come up with that. I'm ashamed of us.


Indeed, the pinnacle of our non-'Scoop' nomenclative creativity is the name we gave our left-handed guy. We call him 'Lefty'. That's just atrocious. If we don't straighten up soon, the softball league will ask us to turn in our gloves and keg taps.


Somehow, our glaring deficiency in the moniker department escaped notice for several seasons. Until this week. On Tuesday, we played a team that must be the champions of calling each other names that their mothers wouldn't recognize. It was beautiful. Their pitcher was 'Scroogie', who threw the ball to 'Spuds' behind the plate. They had 'J-Dog' and 'Wheels' in the middle infield, with 'Smitty' and 'Milkshake' manning the corners. In the outfield, it was 'Bimbo', 'Slick', and 'Nails'. And 'Kevin'.


(Yeah, I don't know. Maybe Kevin's new. Or they don't like him much. I didn't ask.)


These guys put our team to shame. Oh, sure -- we won the game. We beat them by fourteen runs; the ump almost enforced the 'mercy rule' in the fifth inning. But I could barely look them in the eye as we shook hands afterward. 'Bimbo'? 'Milkshake'? We are not worthy.


I've decided to take matters into my own hands regarding our sad state of nicknaming affairs. I'm simply going to come up with names for the other players, and yell them out during games until they stick. This seems much better than my original plan to ask the guys to come up with a nickname for me, first. I'm the team smartass, remember, so that's just begging for trouble? Do I want to spend my summers hearing, 'Nice play, Tinkles!' or 'Swing away, Fattycakes!'? I don't think so.


Still, I have to be careful. Just because I'm taking first crack at assigning names doesn't mean it won't come back to me eventually. And as hard -- nay, nigh impossible -- as it may be, it's in my best interest to come up with nicknames that are flattering. Or neutral. Or at the very least, don't include the word 'booger'.


That makes things more challenging.


I've come up with a few ideas, though. For instance, there's this infielder on our team who does a nice job of getting down on the ball, staying low to the ground to make plays. I think I'll call him 'WienerDog'. I'm sure he'd like that. And the girl who says she takes a bath before and after every game? 'Tubby' seems right for her. 'Good eye, Tubby! Nice hustle, Tubba-lubba-ding-dong!' That's got a nice ring to it.


Yep, soon our scandalous lack of nicknames will be a thing of the past. With a little perserverance and some powerful lungs, I'll whip us into a team full of 'BeaverCheeks', 'Greasys', 'SugarNips', and 'Tardos' in no time. Then we'll be playing some softball. The team will be so pleased.


Man. I am so going to get 'Fattycakes', aren't I? Dammit.