Saturday, July 08, 2006

Loan Wolves and Englishmen...

...practice softball in the midday sun.
Five of us got together for a practice this morning at Clapham South, for about three and a half hours. Hot and sunny weather, and no frisbee-throwers to distract us. We practised throwing, catching, hitting, base-running and outfielding. Ben came along at eleven and had some good ideas for drills. It was a fun session, and I think we all benefited from it. Good to see last year's MVW Alison moving steadily towards complete fitness after her injury, and Olivia, a relative novice, improving all the time. Tigger has come on in leaps and bounds due to enlisting her nearest and dearest for throwing/catching practice. For my own part, I'm better than I was, but still pretty dire, except maybe running bases with the wind behind me.
For some reason, at least six balls ended up going out of the park and into the road, leading to various Wolves having to play a kind of real-life Frogger to rescue them from the traffic. One important object lesson from this came when we saw a ball survived being run over by a car with no ill-effects at all. It's no surprise, then, that when one hits you in the hand, or shin, or face, the ball's not going to be the one coming off worse...
The team will still need to be extremely lucky to win any games this season - but then, as Gary Player said, "the more I practise, the luckier I get"....

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