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Mar 23 2000: Does Every Fan Secretly Wish…?

So I learned about an amazing thing today. Women’s Major League Baseball.

Right here in New England there’s the WNEBL, Women’s New England Baseball League, and according to American Women’s Baseball League there are women’s leagues/teams in fourteen states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Virginia.

Hmmm.

Now, you know I’m not seriously considering dropping everything in my already too-busy life (teaching tae kwon do three nights a week, running my own publishing company, community volunteering, etc…) to start training to play women’s baseball. You know I’m not in any kind of shape to play a really physically demanding sport–I’m only just getting back into fighting shape for tae kwon do after my back injury. And you know (if you’ve been reading these journal entries), that the first time in twenty years I even wore a glove, threw a ball, or caught, was just a few weeks ago. You KNOW I’m not thinking of playing baseball.

But you know that I am.

Does every fan long to be in the game, somewhere deep in his or her heart? Or is it just me? On the one hand, you accrue all this baseball knowledge through spectation and reading the articles and all that… why not be something other than an armchair quarterback? (Sorry, wrong sport, but you know what I mean.)

But on the other hand, maybe it’s better to live vicariously through the superstars we idolize. That way we can keep our illusions about our own abilities?

I am NOT thinking about trying to play baseball in a women’s league. I am thirty two years old. Heck, Pat Kelly, who played for the Yanks 1991-1997 is thirty two, and he announced today he’s retiring. I never played in little league or even softball. I don’t even know if I CAN play.

And yet it’s so tempting to go and find out. There’s a clinic/pre-tryout indoors in Danvers, MA this Sunday, at a place where they have an indoor clay field, and batting cages. Wouldn’t it be neat just to go and see…?

Since finding the site I have these little daydreams, a kind of montage plays in my head with locker room camaraderie, cheering from the dugout bench, making the catch at first (don’t ask me why I see myself at first base–it’s a mystery to me too), running out a grounder at first…

I can’t. Not without turning my life upside down. I don’t even have time or the physical stamina currently to consider getting into a local inter-business softball league. But it’s fun to dream, isn’t it?

And I want to keep my eye on the women’s league. It wasn’t too long ago people were pooh-poohing the idea of pro-women’s basketball. But now the WNBA has taken off. Could WMLB do the same? I’ll be watching.

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