J'ai fais au softball ce weekend!

`I played softball this weekend! OH MY GOODNESS did it feel wonderful (absolutely wonderful) to play softball. It was a tournament that was organized by some group, and I played with a team called BCF Paris (Baseball Club de France, Paris). Let me first tell you how it all began...

One of the first days after I moved in with my host family, they asked me what I liked to do and one of my first responses (naturally) was to say I like to play softball. Softball here, unlike in the US, is not popular or even well known, so my host mother was a little confused when I said that. She didn't know what it was. Neither did the father. So I explained that it was like baseball, only for girls (les femmes). My "mother" offered to help me find a place to practice and play, so she called this sports service for paris and she found 2 places where I could play. 2, in all of Paris. Note that there are almost 2 million people just in the actual city of paris, and there are only 2 places to play. Anyway, I called one of the places (BCF) and got in touch with the coach. The coach then forwarded my call to a player named Halima, who then called me. She seemed excited that I wanted to play and we got things set up for this weekend for me to play. We had a meeting place at a metro stop and then we carpooled about 40 minutes outside of Paris to a park with a softball field and a baseball field. OK, you know how the french do that kissing thing on the cheek to people they are familiar with or meet? Yeah, I know about that too but my knowledge of the seemed to fail me when I actually needed it. When I finally met Halima and the other players carpooling together She said "Hi, I'm Halima" and leaned in for the "bisous" (as it is called in french) and like a trained dog I stuck out my hand. Silly silly silly me. She laughed, I laughed, and we were awkward. She said it was ok because I was new and may not be accustomed to that form of greeting. When we made it to the fields, I went on the "bisous" the other players on the team.
I was very happy to be out there, but in the back of my mind I knew that I hadn't thrown a softball or played in a game for almost 2 months, and that's a really long time for me. I'm really sore right now, but that's besides the point. I surprised myself, though and was able to throw and to pitch. I pitched a game and we won. We actually won all of our games. it was tournament so saturday we played 3 and today we played 2. We ended up winning the entire thing and we got a trophy, as well as cake and wine at the end. It was satisfying.

The team. The team is comprised of people of all ages. The youngest being 17 years old and the oldest being..I don't know maybe mid 30s? early 40s? They all looked young to me and they played great and with a great attitude. Each time a player came in from batting, whether or not they got a hit or got out, they went down the line of players on the bench and gave them high-fives. Lots of support from the other members and never was a bad word uttered from any of them. Great team spirit and they were all out there just to have fun. No pressure at all. A very humbling experience indeed. Almost all of the older players on the team knew english but I told them that I prefer to have them speak in french because I'll learn faster that way. Only when I really needed to know something did they give in and tell it to me in english. But I understood mostly everything that was said to me and I feel that I've already picked up a lot (in terms of slang and just speaking faster and comprehending more) even in just two days.

The games. We played 5 games, but 3 out of those 5 we played a team from Italy. It was really cool to listen to them speak and cheer in italian. It makes me want to learn italian. I learned how to cheer in french, too. "Allez!!" (pronounced Al-lay) means: Come on! Let's go! Go! and "Bien fait!" means well done, or good job, "Bien essaye" (pronounced: be-ye ess-ai-yai) means good try, (literally well tried) and "bien lance!" (pronounced be-ye lawn-say) means good pitch! nice throw! well thrown! So anyway, that's a brief overview of french cheers. There's more, of course, but I don't know a lot and I don't feel like typing it all. I played third for all of the games except one, and that is when I pitched. I also batted 2nd in the lineup all weekend, which was odd for me but I got hits. I should let you know that since softball isn't as big of a sport as it is in the US, the playing level is also not the same. It was horrible or anything, but the pitching mainly was below what I am used to. I had a lot of fun, though, and that's all I wanted to do. I will continue to play with them as long as I can.

After the games on saturday we went to a teammate's house and cooked dinner. There was chicken and merguez (thinner sausages..I don't know how they taste, though, because I don't eat meat) and this potato-egg kish thing that one of the players who grew up in Mexico made. That was really good. Then there was salad and dessert and then....Wii!! I have never played the Wii before, but man is it fun! I boxed and played tennis against another person on the team. It was nice to play and not worry about trying to speak in french or understand what they were saying. I have to say that I completely sucked (je suis nul, in french) at boxing but I rocked at tennis. I highly recommend playing the Wii at least once, if not more times, in your life. It's much more interactive and fun than other video games. After that very long day (i got up at 7am, and didn't get home until 12:35am) i came back home, went to bed and then proceeded to wake up again at 7am so that I could play again. Ouch. my legs and my arms are so sore. Ok, that's all I can think of to write right now, but I am sure that I will think of something later about softball this weekend. Hope you enjoyed the post as much as I did playing softball!