She’s a Long One
“You do not have to love yourself in order to stubbornly refuse to hate yourself.” –Horrible Mean Bad Woman A few weeks ago I was managing a new player practice session for my baseball league with some other managers and I was doing a way better job than anyone else, of course. My baseball league, the LABF, is a labor of love and sweat and sometimes tears because there IS crying in baseball, actually. The only reason anyone thinks there isn’t is because Tom Hanks’ character said it in League of Their own, and then it became baseball cannon forever. History is written by the victors and 90’s Tom Hanks, as they often say. This is going to be a ‘listen to women’ story, which is weird because if you’re here you are literally paying to listen to a woman, so like, duh. Howevs, there’s some things I haven’t talked about in the essay portion of the Wetterhead Fan Zone because I am still processing them, but I need to, and I want to, and I think it’s important to get these thoughts out so they can hopefully help someone else. I want to help women and woman identified folks who feel cornered like I did, and I want to empower women to walk through traumatic and triggering shit with their head held high. But also, there are a lot of well meaning menfolk here, and a lot of what I write is for you. I do not think there are enough places where men can go to learn about what it’s like to not be a man while also being entertained by one of the “Most Talented and Innovative Comedic Minds of Our Time” (from an interview I did for Things I Tell My Boyfriend While He is Trying To Play Video Games Monthly). Back to the ball field, where I was lacing up my filthy cleats and I clocked two very, let’s say, baseball-forward men walking up. It was their first tryout for the LABF, and I can’t tell you exactly why, but I knew they were in the wrong place. One of them, who we will call Jimmy, was wearing a uniform from another league. He also had a bunch of baseball gear with him. He really looked like an aging minor league baseball player, and he certainly hit like one. When he came up for his turn to hit during a batting practice where I was catching, in full gear (so, literally right behind where the batter stands), I said “hello!” and he ignored me. Ok, fine, there’s a lot going on. But there was this weird like, eagerness? I felt like he came to show off. And off he showed, every single pitch was sent packing to the deepest unexplored depths of center field. Easily a single or triple every time. It reminded me of the one time we let my trainer, Dale play with us and he instantly hit a triple and it was frankly embarrassing. It looked like we hired someone. People hit home runs in our league approximately once a season, and it almost always involves an error or two. We work really, really hard to keep the league as competitive as possible while always maintaining a level of inclusiveness to beginners and less seasoned players. It’s just more fun that way. A lot of us, myself included, have played for more competitive leagues and it’s sort of this joyless aggression with a whiff of Theo Vonn. Also, it’s rare to have a co-ed fast pitch baseball league, because of the disparity between men and women who grew up playing. Softball skills are not necessarily transferable, and not very many women play softball into college and then randomly decide to play recreational baseball afterwards instead of softball. You have to really love baseball to want to leave the comfort of those awesome giant cantaloupe balls and very competitive lesbian ratios. After Jimmy finished his little performance, I went up to another manager, Jon, to make sure we eliminated Jimmy from consideration. He was just way too good, and I got a weird vibe. Jon, was visibly sad about this, because his team really needs to draft some good hitters. Fortunately I do not care, so that was that. Except it wasn’t, because I later found out from the baseball managers slack channel (a hellish place because of my incessant bits) that STUPID Matt P wanted to draft Jimmy and his friend for their team. I will spare you the back and forth that eventually ended with a long phone call with Matt where he assured me that my opinion is his most sacred muse, a guiding force in his quest to become a better ally. But, he assured me, Jimmy was just an awkward guy (red flag, sorry) who meant well, and finally I agreed to talk to him specifically at the next practice so I could see I had it all wrong. Okay, I’m not sure I need to explain this to you lot, but “he’s just an awkward guy” is almost never applied to guys who are just awkward while every other characteristic they exhibit is positive. Pippin is just an awkward hobbit, he’s also a true friend and he loves harmless mischief and…the PalantÃr…ok bad example. You get my point. If Harry Vanderspiegel existed in the real world, there would be people saying “Um, I don’t think that he’s just awkward. I think he might be a murderer?” And then there would be Matt P from my baseball league inviting him to babysit his newborn. I brought my concerns to the league, and it was agreed that probably there had been too much drama about Jimmy and that we didn’t need another cishet white male ringer when the priority is always drafting people from underrepresented communities. I acquiesced to this, knowing that for some people in the league the “drama” was me ranting about it, not people in