Day 1, Tournament 3, First Game Warm-ups

“Psssst. Its time to wake up.” My mom propped the door open just a crack and whispered.

I rolled over. The bright red LED’s on my clock apologized for the four on it’s face. My room was still pitch black.

“Okay…” I groaned back in disbelief.

I stretched my knees and winced as they each cracked individually. Standing up without doing that is unbelievably dangerous, especially going into the day I’m about to brave.

The sun finally started peeking through my blinds as I finished buttoning up my jersey.

“You okay?” My mom gives an understanding smile as she sees the bags under my eyes. “Drink it now. It’s going to be painfully hot out there today. You’re going to melt under your helmet.”

I glance at my weather app, 97 degrees and it’s not even five. Fantastic.

We packed my equipment bag in the car and headed on our way. I shoved my earbuds in and hit play as I attempted to stay awake between my house and the nearest Wawa. The sooner I could drown my sleepiness in coffee, the better. As terrible as it sounds, I had become reliant upon Wawa’s “Mocha Wake-Up” and never performed well without a 24 oz in my system.

By the time we reached the fields, I had downed the cup of hot mud and was pumped for the game thanks to my music.

I stretched again as I got out of the car and looked up to find my coach’s car pulling in. My dad plopped my bag on the ground and handed me my bat.

“Let’s try to hit the ball today, okay?” He said with a smirk.

It was a curse. Whenever I caught a good game, I could hit nothing but pop flies, but whenever I had a good game at bat, I let 20,000 balls past me. I shrugged and scowled at his comment as I walked away, my back turned to him.

“Good morning ladies!” My coach bellowed almost too loudly for this time of morning. “Lets get everything to a nice warm up spot and get our cleats on.” We drudged on, anxious to get through warmups and excited to play three games that day.

After we ran through the wet outfield grass and stretched, I was asked to throw with the ace for the first game so that we could hop ahead of everyone in the batting line when we were finished.

As my creaky arm reached further and further across the field with each step my pitcher took backwards, I began to feel confident in my arm for today’s games.

When we finally finished warming our arms up, I picked up my bat and gently mapped my swing before crushing the first ball off the tee. I had always been a power hitter, and my life goal was to one day knock the bownet over, so naturally every tee swing that I took was full force. It never worked.

Finally the last part of my warm up. Kneeling down in front of the other half of the battery for this game, I held my glove up while she carefully warmed her wrist up. Every movement my pitchers make while warming up has to be executed perfectly. A slight change in movement could cause bad habits and therefore, walk-a-thons.

I pulled my mask on as she carefully paced back 43 feet from me and went into a full windup.

*pop*

Her first fastball hit my glove and I smiled. Half joking I asked her how she was feeling, and with a smile back, she answered with one word: “Good.”

The rest of her warm-up went just as smooth and we headed back into the dugout to watch the rest of the team finish up. What felt like seconds later, the umpire hollered for coaches and captains.