Extra Innings

Now time for the random event of the day which was actually yesterday, but I did not have time to post so it will be posted today. Yesterday I played in the 100 Inning Baseball Game, which was first played in 2004 and has been played annually since. It is a charity game that donates money to the ALS foundation which helps patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly called Lou Gehrig’s disease after the great Lou Gehrig. Little is known about ALS aside from that it generally affects older people around the age of 50 and results in a loss of muscle strength and coordination. So back to the game, the 100 Inning Baseball Game is a 100 inning long game, roughly 30 hours and is taking place this weekend. I played in 26 innings yesterday (22-48) which took 8 hours. It was a lot of fun and I raised a good amount of money along the way. It was also very challenging, a lot of the players there were in some of the top Boston leagues and looked like they currently or formerly played for some top college teams; needless to say I was overmatched. But I stuck through it and did my best working a walk in one at bat and grounding out to move a runner to third in another. I also got to play all around the outfield which was fun. Another challenge was the endurance, after about 15 innings I started to lose it in my legs and definitely in my feet but I managed to stay active and take the field almost every inning. The last challenge was on a personal level, being one of the youngest and probably least skillful players on my team it was tough to talk to the other guys there, but after a while I became more comfortable and struck up many conversations in the game. I guess I could look at all these challenges and say “Wow why would I ever do that, it’s too much work!” But really at the end of the day it doesn’t matter how well I did, how many hits I got, or how many catches I made, all that matters is that I played baseball, something I used to do for myself, for charity, I did something that I like to do to benefit others, and although I was cold, sore, and couldn’t really get a hit, I had a blast and will definitely do it again.