The Bunt for Red October: The Mixed Softball Championship
It’s Sunday afternoon in July. The mercury is flirting with 25 degrees and the clouds in the sky seem to miss the sun, who burns holes in the dirt around the infield. Sweat pours down the pitcher’s forehead; she has thrown 5 innings of fast pitch fury and her arm shows no signs of letting up.
The batter has two hits today; one to shallow left, just behind the shortstop; and one that snuck between the second baseman and shortstop, deflecting off second and shot straight up in the air. When the rookie right field grabbed the ball from the air, his rainbow throw to second sailed into foul territory.
If the batter hits this, his team goes up by one, scoring the former Bundesliga outfielder waiting on third for her chance to come home. If he strikes out, the defense trots off the field, where a coach, who sits rolling another joint, will shout out the names of the next three batters. They will include a former college baseball player from Ohio, a 55 year-old journalist who worked for twenty years in Asia before relocating to Berlin, and a German who never heard of softball until a trip to Chicago last year.
She winds up and fires one across the plate. The umpire, exhausted from playing first base in the day’s early game, calls it outside, though it graces the edge of the plate. The frustrated pitcher sighs, the batter smirks.
She leans back and puts one inside, called a strike, though questionable. The batter huffs and digs in. She throws a riser ball she learned from a Dutch architect who moved to Berlin to get away from a woman, or be near a woman, nobody is quite sure.
The ball sails up on her and the hitter whacks it deep into left-center. The outfielders both break for the fly, claiming loudly that they got it. They collide near the fence and the ball dribbles under the makeshift boundary. Ground rule double.
The hitter’s pulse pounds as he stands on second. The coach throws his joint into the dirt and comes up yelling. The pitcher hangs her head and steps onto the mound to throw another pitch. Her leg itches. The wind blows. It feels more like a hair dryer than a relief. “Batter up!” the umpire yells.
Moments like this have been happening all summer in the Berlin Mixed Softball League, a co-ed ten-team fast-pitch softball league that’s been hosting ball games in Berlin since 1996. If you’ve missed every single game of the year, this weekend is your chance to catch the best of the best play in a three-game series.
The Niku Jaghs, a predominantly Japanese team whose logo is the Jagh, or potato, a tongue-in-cheek term for Germans in Japanese, will face the Prenzelberg Piranhas, which means the same thing in English or German. The Piranhas bring a big hitting lineup and solid defense. The Jaghs bring a deep bench, a huge fan base, and a jukebox’ worth of between-inning songs. The Jaghs have won the last two championships, while the Piranhas haven’t won a title since 2002.
Check the MSL website at www.msl-berlin.de for schedule info. The first two games were on Friday during the day, the third game on Sunday. Next season kicks off in April, giving that pitcher enough time to work on that rise-ball.
