PLAY BALL?!

Excerpt from an actual conversation on Monday between “Blaine,” the managing editor, and “Rick,” the community editor:

Blaine: Hey Rick, can you give (freelancer) Marlene Peralta a call to see if she can play softball on Friday?

Rick: Uh, isn’t she coming off spinal cord surgery?

Blaine: I’m not forfeiting Friday’s game, Rick!

Apparently, it’s time once again for the Outer Borough Newspaper Softball League to rear its ink-stained head. It leads to some funny moments, like the one I just mentioned. But there ain’t much fun in Reporter-ville. At least, not for someone like me, who detests participating in team sports of any kind.

I expect that in a typical newspaper office, my choice not to spend a Friday evening swinging at the proverbial grapefruit would hardly cause a stir. The problem is that we’re a small operation. Even after calling in all their able-bodied and willing freelancers, Blaine and Rick only had enough warm bodies to cover all four bases and mid-field.

As a result, they spent much of Monday trying to convince me to take up the glove and bat. They told me that I could play catcher. Blaine even said he would pay me to cover it like a typical journalistic assignment, with the kind of access that guys from ESPN never get. My reply: I’d think about it.

Perhaps I should have shown more backbone and told him outright, “Blaine, my father couldn’t coerce me into playing team sports, and you aren’t about to, either.” But what you need to understand is: We’re like a big family at our Queens-based office, so we try to be there for one another, even if deep down, we’d rather be someplace else (Like sitting in a dark, air-conditioned movie theater watching “Miami Vice”).

What you also have to understand is: Blaine hates – and I mean hates – the newspaper we’d be playing against on Friday. I suspect that thrashing those guys would probably make his entire summer, and that’s the kind of hate I can respect. But do I respect it enough to subject myself to some degree of painful humiliation, which I think is inevitable? Blaine and Rick actually keep themselves in decent shape for summer play. Meanwhile, I am in such woeful condition that I might need a respirator by the second inning.

Now, the wonderful K. – who has also been invited to participate in the summer classic, having published photos in our paper over the past few months – has pointed out that my co-workers are unlikely to expect much from me. They probably know that I don’t regularly exercise, much less participate in group athletics. And most likely, Blaine wouldn’t have even asked me, except that he was desperate not to forfeit the match, which is understandable. Who wouldn’t prefer to go down swinging against one’s rivals, as opposed to ignominious forfeiture, akin to surrender without a fight?

But no matter what kind of a team gets fielded on Friday, my concern is, how freely will the competitive juices be flowing? The reason that I dislike participating in any kind of team sport has always had to do with those juices, which are about as intoxicating as any alcoholic beverage. Now, I like being active. I like exercise. What I hate, however, is how competition turns people into assholes. I’ve seen it time and again throughout junior high and high school. I would rather stay out of the competitive sporting arena completely than deal with adrenaline-happy jerk-offs for whom the chasing after a cow-skin spheroid becomes a matter of life and death.

It’s only a game, you know? Why do sports have to inevitably turn into chest-thumping, humiliate-your-opponent bullshit? It’s tacky enough when it happens on the professional level; meanwhile, we’re journalists! The only sports-related injuries any of us have likely endured lately involved paper cuts from flipping through the sports section. Also, I graduated high school years ago, and for me, part of the legacy of receiving my diploma was the knowledge that I would never have to take part in anything resembling gym class ever again. I swore that if I ever tore an ACL, it would stand for Awkward Container of Licorice.

Aw crap, am I just overreacting? Anticipating the worst, when I’ll probably end up having a nice time? Maybe the only way for me to know for sure is to confess my reservations to the guys at work. They’re not big enough assholes that they would ostracize me if I ended up declining to play softball. Anyway, even if they did, I’m fairly certain that I could find another weekly newspaper to ply my trade at, just as easily as they could find a former Triple-A outfielder to be their new reporter.