Getting Kicked in Kickball

First of all, it's pretty much mom's fault that I don't like games that involve balls. Of any sort. Large, small, flying, rolling...I don't know how to handle them and they generally scare me. (Especially when they're flying through the air at my head.) Mom's the same way only way, way worse; I figure I inherited from her.

Our SF group challenged another SF group to a game of kickball this last Sunday. Unfortunately, 4 of our key people weren't able to make it. That meant there were 6 of us against the formidable 10 from the other SF group. (And I don't really count, so it was really more like 5 on 10.)

Our odds were not good.

I managed to avoid kicking the ball entirely the first time we were up. This was done rather easily because I had made the mistake of bringing Henry to the park. I couldn't very well just leave him while I kicked the ball, because odds were good that he'd jump in my way, make me trip, and then I'd fall and be out.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to leave Henry with the other team when we were in the outfield because we were barely up to kick for 5 minutes together. (We kept getting out.)

So I took him with me.

He sat there and cried as he watched everyone have fun but him. I stood there in the vicinity of 2nd base (but really not on 2nd base because who can hang on to a dog and watch a base at the same time?!) and watched Laura and Luke catch/chase all the balls that came my direction.

Danny kept yelling strange phrases that I didn't understand like "Any face, any base!" and "2 down!"

I'd stand there and try to figure out what in the world he was talking about. Two down? Does that mean there are two outs, or does it mean that there are two runners on base? (Both were true.)

And about that time a ball would go flying past. A ball that, had I been paying attention, I'd have caught. Well, OK, that's maybe a little bit of an exaggeration. I'd have tried to catch it.

I'm still not sure what "any face, any base" means. I'm open to suggestions.

I probably should mention, in all fairness and in a spirit of positiveness (is that a word?) that I did get to 2nd base, even though I couldn't find it. (We didn't have any bases which meant we were all running around like drunks trying to find the little dusty circles on the ground where the bases should have been, had we gotten the bases.) I think 2nd base is further than I've made it in a long time. Stop laughing.

Becca was a complete trooper at 1st base, about a million foul balls got kicked her way and she had to chase them down. I was kind of glad I wasn't at 1st base. (It probably helps that she's a 1st grade teacher and her students probably always kick foul balls.) She gets the Good Sport award.

Laura caught way more than her fair share of balls in the outfield. She was standing in my vicinity and I didn't catch any. So she definitely gets the Good Game award for picking up my slack and being awesome.

Luke and Becca get the award for Good Newlyweds. Between Joey and I, we took 6 pictures of the two of them posing all cute and newlywed-like. Nice job, guys. Additionally, Luke gets an award for having to be in the outfield and look directly in the sun. He gets the Good Eyesight award.

Danny gets the Good Organization award for organizing the entire thing. I was trying to think of some award I could give him that had something to do with using phrases I didn't understand, but I gave up on that.

Joey pitched for us every inning and I was quite impressed that not only could he make the ball get all the way up to the plate, he pitched it straight! (Two things I can't do. I've tried, but really not very hard.) He gets the award for Good Pitching.

And these are some pictures from the event that we took with our new camera! We had lots of fun...even though we lost. Really, really badly.

Like, as in we never even scored badly.

Danny cheering Laura on

Joey pitching

One of the many cute pictures of Luke and Becca that we took...

Our team!

Sad we lost...And a kiss to make us all feel better.