My one baseball regret

I often think about the day a woman will make her way onto a major league baseball roster. She might be a pitcher or a second baseman, but one day – and I hope I’m around to see it – a woman will play the game.

This blog post was inspired by this post over at Padrographs.

It never would have been me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a regret from not playing baseball. Growing up, I loved baseball with a passion.

I’d play baseball and stickball with neighborhood kids and was always one of the first ones picked (tooting my own horn). I remember making a one-handed catch and ran straight into a parked car, but I held on to the ball.

There was another time I was playing two-hand touch football and I was wearing a girlie suspenders outfit with only one side notched. Well, during a play it broke and my pants fell down.

I took the good with the bad.

However, when I was a sophomore in high school, I transferred to public school after spending a year in a catholic school. I decided I wanted to play baseball instead of softball. I was a catcher, and a decent one at that with a good arm.

I could also hit the ball well.

When I brought my case to the school principal, I was told I would try out for the baseball team because there was a female equivalent sport in softball.

So, I left his office and played softball. I enjoyed it, but there were so many days during softball practice I would look beyond the outfield and watch the baseball team practice. I was jealous.

In college, I played softball. There was no baseball team, so softball was my only option.

However, there often are days I think about what it would have been like to play baseball. I took batting practice last year with the independent baseball team that used to be in Atlantic City. The batting practice coach was pleasantly surprised with my hitting once I got my timing down.

So, my one regret was not fighting to try out for the baseball team in high school. It’s the only thing I think about what could have been.