I'm a hot head.

I played softball tonight, filling in on my brothers-in-law's team. We warmed up and waited for the other team to show. Finally they started to show and one-by-one, we started noticing some things. Cut-off t-shirts, tight muscle shirts, black Adidas track pants and designer sunglasses on the field. We were playing against the Jersey Shore cast.

And they didn't disappoint. They were going nuts on each other after the first inning. Really getting into each others' faces. It was great fun to watch. We were crushing the ball, too, which made things worse.

Most of you reading the blog know me. And most of you know me as a nice, mild-mannered guy. Right? Well, apparently the Jersey Shore cast brings out the other side of me.

We're in the 4th inning and I'm up at bat. The pitcher (I think he's Ronny) has huge muscles. And he makes sure everyone notices, too. He lifts his sleeves between each pitch. And lifts his shorts up when he's at bat. He throws a wild pitch and our man on 3rd runs home and scores. The runner is no Usain Bolt so the bench goes nuts, cheering like crazy.

The excessive cheering did not bode well for me at the plate. The next pitch was thrown above my head. I started to get the feeling that something was going on. I started thinking that maybe, just maybe the pitcher was about to take out his frustration on me. It's three balls and one strike now. And with the pitcher getting set to pitch the next one, the feeling in me that he was about to try and hit me was overwhelming. The wind up, the pitch and he threw one as hard as he could right behind me. A fuse blew in my brain. I threw down my bat and took a hard step towards the mound. The next words out of my mouth were profound and profanity-laced.

The umpire, a real hot head himself, stepped in and said that he knew FOR A FACT that the pitcher was not trying to hit me. Idiot. Seriously, a total fucking idiot.

Being the nice guy that I am, I tried to have a conversation with the umpire after the inning asking how it was possible that the pitcher wasn't throwing at me. That's when I got my official warning from the ump that the next time I spoke I'd be thrown out.

In my next at bat, I hit the ball hard and far, but it was right at their centre fielder. No big deal, as I had already had a triple and a single off the guy. But this time, as I'm walking back to the bench, the pitcher says: "Take a fucking seat." I kept my cool.

I calmly went up to my friend, the ump, and explained what the pitcher said. The ump runs over to another player on my team and says, verbatim: "I can't call anything I don't hear. So tell your player that another word and he's gone and to stay the hell away from me." Me. Really? I hadn't yelled or screamed or even showed up the ump. He was a complete hot head. But now I wanted to really get to him.

Finally, in the last inning, I was playing first and there was a nice play. The ball was thrown to me at first and the ump called that my foot came off the bag. Wrong. So I looked at him and he goes into this diatribe about how he saw my foot come off. So I put my hand up and told him I didn't want to hear anymore. I was actually upset with myself because I had come up with a better line afterward. I wanted to tell him that we weren't on speaking terms, so he should just keep his mouth shut. It was my George Costanza "jerk store" moment.

I stayed in the game. We won. I went 3 for 4 and played solidly in the field. All in all, a pretty fun game. And no one got hurt.

--

Sign I'm approaching 30: I consider rushing the mound when I get a ball thrown at me in underhand softball. Oh, and it's B'nai Brith.