The Church has various sports programs for the youth to participate in. I was not that interested in playing these sports, especially basketball. So I definitely avoided that. When it was softball season I made it a point not to sign up for that. But one year our ward’s team made it to region. Our leaders felt they needed some extra practices to get ready. Even though I hadn’t even cared about playing before, I was asked to come to the practices, and being the sunshine athlete I was, I decided to go try it out. In the first practice the coach had us play every position and rotate after someone got a run. He wanted to see who was best at what. When we played our first region game he gathered us around to tell us the starting line-up. “Well, guys, Billy was putting them in there pretty good the other night, so he’ll be the starting pitcher.” Nobody protested but I could feel a few guys rolling their eyes.
I was first up to bat. I hadn’t even touched a softball bat for the last two years since grade school, except for the few practices I had attended. My first swing was a strike. But on the next ball I connected and the ball went sailing over the first baseman’s head. It was just barely good so I ran for first base. But the player in the outfield got the ball and threw it to first before I got there. I was out. Soon it was my turn to pitch. The couch had me practice a few times before play began. Everyone from our ward, was cheering for me. The players and spectators. Even Bishop Webb was there. They were all cheering for me. I’m afraid I let them all down. Every ball I threw turned out to be a hit for the other team. Our opponents got off to a commanding lead right there in the first inning. When we finally got the other team out three times, I walked quickly to the dugout. The coach approached me and told me he was going to go with someone else as pitcher. “Good,” I said. If he hadn’t replaced me, I would have requested him to do so.
Our team played a valiant game and ended up coming back to win. In our next game we won handily. I didn’t play, but I felt I was still part of the team. It was a calm summer evening. All of us piled into the back of our coach’s pick up truck. He was taking us for an ice cream cone to celebrate the win. We had also found out our next game was to be the Multi Region Championship. We all chanted, “We’re number one! We’re number one!” A particularly pessimistic boy kept saying “or two” every time we yelled, “We’re number one!” We realized that even if we lost the next game, we’d have second place.
I didn’t play in the next game either. I was glad. No way would I even want to be out there with that team. Many of the boys on the other team had huge biceps. These were supposed to be 14 and 15 year-olds, like us, but some of them had full beards! Our team put up a great fight and it was a close game, but we lost.
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