Hello Sportsfans!

So I've mentioned a few times that I play co-ed recreational organized sports . Let me just give you a rundown of those sports and my duties during games:

Sport: Softball
Season(s): Spring, Summer, sometimes Fall
History: I have played softball basically since I was a fetus (I was a very athletic fetus). I was pretty awesome at it, played on lots of traveling teams, etc. I had to quit seriously playing when I was 15 due to a disease in my knees called Osgood-Schlatter disease.
Current Duties:
1. Pitching. I am the pitcher, and I'm not too bad at it. Gerbs heckles me from the outfield (there's nothing like the support of your teammates), but I think he would admit that there are worse pitchers out there. Maybe not since he is the backup pitcher.
2. Hitting. I used to be a great hitter. That skill has apparently left the Sarah building, however, as I can no longer hit for shit. When I do by some miracle make contact with the ball, there is a 30% chance I will actually make it to 1st base before I am thrown out....from the outfield. I'm what people in the sports profession and every single other profession might call "the slowest runner in the known universe". You know it's bad when your own father yells out, "Unhitch the plow!!!!" in an effort to get you to move faster.

Sport: Volleyball
Season(s): Winter
History: I played in gym class and totally sucked. I have played in rec leagues for 3-4 years now and still totally suck.
Current Duties:
1. Bumping and spiking. Basically my job is to scream when the ball is coming at me and smack it away before it hits me in the face. About 50% of the time this tactic works okay. The other 50% of the time, I score points for the other team. I love volleyball so much, but if Suz doesn't tell me when to hit it, I won't. I will just stand there wondering who is going to come up and push me out of the way to get it. You could say that volleyball is not my sport.

Sport: Touch Football
Season(s): Apparently all of them
History: I played tackle with the neighbor boys growing up. I think now this may have been a ploy by the neighbor boys to touch the neighbor girls. I wore a lot of unnecessary full sweatsuit outfits. I just started playing adult rec this past fall. I never know what the score is or if we have won or lost until it's over.
Current Duties:
1. Defensive specialist. I go in on defense and wait for one of the boys to tell me where to go and which person/people to cover. Then when the person that I'm responsible for gets the ball, I try to touch them with two hands to "tackle" them, but usually I just end up falling. Sometimes I am responsible for the quarterback so I jump around in front of him--you know, to intimidate him--and then when the ref says "5 one thousand", I am allowed to run after him. Then he usually runs by me, and I fall.
2. Avoiding playing offense. Usually when Steph says, "Okay we need 3 girls on offense!", I hide behind our superfan, Matt, because when you're on offense there is a chance that the ball will actually be thrown to you. I can't handle being that directly responsible for losing the game. I have actually been in on offense before and have made 2 catches. The first one I ever caught was amazing, and the guy who "tackled" me was the hottest guy in the entire tri-state area. Then he gave me a hi-five and told me that my catch was great. Then we ran away together and got married in Hawaii under a waterfall.

I absolutely love playing all these sports. But I think I can sense that the end is nearing for two reasons: a) I'm overweight/out of shape and b) I'm old (for example, I sneezed this morning and pulled a muscle in my stomach). The truth is my body is starting to hate me. Let's tally up the body parts that don't work due to sports and non-sports related reasons:

1. Right ankle, shin and foot due to direct hit of line drive to shin 1.5 years ago at softball. Sidenote: I now have to wear shinguards during softball. Another sidenote: They do not look as hot as one might think.
2. Left thumb due to jamming it twice in one week at softball this past summer. Once from a line drive hit by a boy. Once from a throw by Monica. Sidenote: Monica, it is not natural for a girl to throw that hard. That's all I'm saying.
3. Left big toe due to jamming my toenail into the toe of my cleats. Sidenote: This looks really nasty. Who wants to see?
4. Back. Threw out back in college while shaving legs in shower.
5. Brain. Overconsumption of alcohol and TV.
6. Head. Migraines.
7. Immune system: Allergies. Sidenote: We'll go into detail on this in a later post. There is too much to tell.
8. Eyes: Wear glasses/contacts since I was 15. Sidenote: Up until like 2 years ago, I was the only one in my family with sight problems. Now my parents, both 55, need reading glasses and Diane needs them to drive. I need them to function as a productive citizen of society. All I'm saying is that nothing about that is unfair. At all.
9. Knees. I already have knee problems from this goddamn Osgood-Schlatter disease. I was told by my pediatrician when I was 12 that it would go away after puberty. I was then told by the salesguy at the soccer equipment store that it would never truly go away. Turns out soccer guy was right. He is now my regular physician. One advantage of having Osgood-Schlatter's, though, is that I can tell when it is going to rain because it makes my knees hurt. I think that makes me a more qualified weatherman than Dick Goddard. That and the fact that I don't have to wear adult diapers.
10. Knees (cont). Yesterday we played football on a frozen tundra. Literally the hardest, most frozen ground I've ever seen. It was like playing on concrete--slippery concrete. I was doing my signature move of running after the quarterback and then falling only I fell directly on my knees. Let me see if I can describe the pain to you. Okay so you know how sometimes you're walking to the ice rink to practice your Olympic skating routine and then Tonya Harding smashes your kneecap in with a crowbar? It was like that, but it was both knees and it was Mother Nature instead of Tonya Harding.

Yeah so I might start a bowling league soon. I think that might be safer. Plus it's a good place to meet men.