Play Ball!

Not long after I got back from my trip to Oregon, one of my co-workers sent out an email asking if the men in our office would be willing to come play on the KSGU pick-up baseball team and if the women in the office would be willing to come cheer. (This is Japan, after all). The guys were happy to join the team and we women-folk swallowed our pride and agreed to think about coming to cheer. I'm not sure that any of us were too enthusiastic as cheerleaders, but in the end talk of wearing the school colors and cheering together won out. Three of us decided to attend as spectators. Keep in mind that I was the only one that new the rules for baseball. My Canadian and Australian co-workers either aren't interested in sports or simply hadn't ever seen a baseball game. It made for some interesting cheering. Their habit of suddenly screaming out just as our pitcher was letting go of the ball or our batter was swinging may not have helped so much, but the general enthusiasm was greatly appreciated and led to a great deal of blushing.

The game was between our school and the neighboring school. Only staff and teachers were playing (no students). It was suppose to be a friendly pick-up game, but it was clearly more than that to most of the players. Keep in mind that KSGU (my school) has never won one of these games. Things didn't look too good from the start. The first pitcher for our team was a older, highly respected man who could barely get the ball over the plate. He would lob it up high and hope for the best. I can't remember if he pitched one or two innings, but he was eventually replaced. We were happy to see that the starting pitcher was not the star pitcher.

The other team took a very different strategy. They had a guy pitching who was probably capable of pitching a no-hitter if he really tried. He pitched for 8 innings uninterrupted and our team got very few hits off of him. We did manage to score a couple runs in the first 8 innings, but that really didn't compare to their 6 runs. Things weren't looking good. Around the 4th inning someone on the other team decided to let his 8 year old son bat. It didn't quite seem fair to be playing super competitive with the pitching but then let the 8 year old bat. I was annoyed. Every one else thought it was cute.

Our English office staff started in the outfield (being largely untested) but soon took over the infield and did a fine job. After a bumpy start our team started to work together well and the game became a fun one to watch.


We started the 9th inning down by 4 runs. We, the cheerleaders, encouraged our team, saying they could still make a comeback, but maybe not really believing it. Then something interesting happened. The other team switched pitchers. All of the sudden our team started getting hit after hit. Their fielding was not as strong as their first pitcher - possibly because they hadn't really needed to do much for the previous 8 innings. KSGU managed to get 4 runs to tie the game. We then got three more runs for good measure. We were up by 3 at the top of the 9th. The other team managed to score once, but didn't catch us. KSGU won! We were very excited.


The next day we were challenged to a rematch.