The winter softball season has started in Perth, Western Australia, so it’s time to put on #4 and suit up for the Bedford Boys.

On the occasions that I am able to play, I thought I would share some insights I take from the games.

It’s always good to reflect on your performance – usually I am doing this whilst giving a recap to my wife on how the game went. Now I that I have a blog, I’ve got another platform to talk to! But in all seriousness, reflection is how we learn from our mistakes, make mental notes on what worked well and put some intel away for the next time you come up against that team.

So, here are a couple of learnings came from today’s game…

Fremantle Rebels (5) vs Bedford (6)

Position: Catcher

Hitting Performance: BB, HR, fly to 3B, Interference (1 from 3)

Game conditions: Wet with patches of heavy rain, but still humid

1. Work with your umpires: Umpires aren’t always going to get it right… some days it’s easier to point out what they did get right, than everything that they got wrong! Nevertheless, they are people too. Work with them, open the lines of communication with them and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Naturally, there are wrong ways of asking questions, but if you do it the right way as a catcher (i.e. “Where did you see that?” in relation to a pitch), you get a better appreciation of where the strike zone is, which you can use to your advantage. And don’t swear at them… I’m fairly certain they don’t like that, and your pitcher won’t appreciate the zone getting squeezed! But at the same time, I got called out for interference on a ball that hit me in the batters box – did I mention that they don’t always get it right? 🙂
2. The last out of the game should never be at home: Bottom of the 7th inning, 2 outs and Rebels had the tying run at second when our short-short made an error, which caused the ball to roll a short distance away from him. Their coach sent the base runner home (quite an aggressive move on their part) and our short-stop retrieved the ball to make a good throw to me at the plate to tag the runner out. All whilst a young and up-&-coming player, capable of clutching up, was left stranded in the on deck circle. Key point: know the game situation! Had the runner (or the base coach) been more conservative, we could’ve had a different outcome for that game.
3. Put it in the ‘little black book’: We managed to tie up some good hitters in the opposing line-up today, so you bet I’ll be noting that intel in my ‘little black book’. This book consists of all my charting for the year (and sometimes years before it) so I know when it comes to crunch time, particularly around finals, I know how we’re going to throw to them before I’ve even got to the ground.
4. You only need to score one more than the other team: This is obviously a no brainer, but all of Rebels’ runs were scored off home run shots which annoyed our pitcher, but at the end of the day… you only need to score one more than the other team. He might’ve felt like he didn’t have his best game, but he came away with the ‘W’! Good on the rest of the team to make sure we had enough runs on the board.

And with that, I’m done debriefing.

Here’s to my next game in another fortnight’s time!

– Aaron