Some Batting Practice

I just got back from a session at the Astoria batting cages. I don't feel like less of a man admitting that they kicked my ass. There are many reasons I am less of a man, and a lack of success at batting cages doesn't contribute to that. I like to think of batting cages as manhood's extra credit: if you do well, you add to your manliness, but if you don't, so what. You see, you get points for going to the batting cages and participating in an athletic endeavor in the first place.

And I'm a switch-hitter. Going both ways in baseball adds points to manliness, whatever gay implications there may be when it comes to switch-hitting in general.

But yeah, today, I sucked. In my defense, the cages there are cramped. I kept hitting the wall with my follow through swing and it threw my timing off. Plus, you pay for time there, as opposed to a number of pitches. And I tell you what: swinging at baseballs for fifteen minutes straight is pretty tiring, especially when every so often you switch sides of the plate.

I make pretty good contact in general, and today was no exception. But when you go to the cages, what you really look forward to are those pitches you hit solidly. The bat seems to go through the ball, as you hardly feel it in your hands; the ball jumps into the cage's net. And when you get in a groove, and you hit a bunch of solid line drives in a row and things are clicking, well, it's freakin' magical. Today, in that fifteen minutes, I had no groove. I hit three pitches really well - one from the right side and two from the left.

But of course it's those three pitches that will bring me back to the Astoria batting cages.