Last Monday I ventured over to White River Valley to watch the undefeated Bloomfield Cardinals and the WRV Wolverines play softball. As far as an exciting game, I was not disappointed -- I cannot remember if it went 10 or 11 as the scoreboard ran out of innings after 9. Girls softball I know is exciting, especially for the parents. To me, however, there seems to be something missing -- like hitting. It just seems to be such a pitcher dominated sport. Apparently there was one hitter that Bloomfield thought could really hit the ball because in five plate appearances she saw 20 straight balls. This couldn't have been much fun for her. I'm not faulting Bloomfield because you have to play to win and she's a run waiting to happen, but I just believe it must not be fun for her to know going into a game that she'll never get a pitch to hit.

By the way, according Barry Bonds' personal historian Rusty Hash, even he never got 5 intentional walks in one game -- although he was intentionally walked with the bases loaded.

I know I'm not the world's most intelligent guy, but here are some things I don't understand about softball...

1. Why do they play with a special colored ball. I asked my friend Beth Wernz why they play with that green ball and she informed me that as an art teacher I should recognize that it is optic yellow -- not green. All I know is it looks to me like a not so ripe grapefruit. I was told that the color makes it easier to see... And I didn't even know Ray Charles played.

2. What's with these little tiny players running around in the batter's box slapping at the ball? You'd swear they are well out of the box when they hit it... but they really aren't. A full swing was rarer than a $2 gallon of gas. I think there were only 2 balls that reached the outfield the entire game. It makes me think that the outfielders should be picking up unemployment checks rather than athletic letters.

On the whole it was an entertaining afternoon because the kids played hard, had fun, and really worked at what they were doing. But as far as I'm concerned, I still liked the slow pitch game where everybody had to use their glove and everybody got to hit the ball... but that's just me. As I say this, I realize that these kids nor baseball players really have no place to play when they graduate due to the demise of slowpitch leagues.