Taking a Stand, or a Stance

This is how you can tell Florida is just days away—when we met for hitting at Stella’s yesterday, Clare wanted praise while I was looking for perfection.  Cue the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

There was one other hitter at Stella’s, a girl maybe two or three younger than Clare.  She looked pretty good, given her god-awful softball stance.  If I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it, literally, a thousand times:  legs wide apart, butt out, bat poised over the back shoulder, the whole body rigid like a statue.  And then you have my daughter, reminiscent of Lance Berkman or a right-handed Boog Powell—feet no more than three feet apart, left foot tippy toe, knees and torso bent slightly, bat parallel to the back shoulder, the whole body in a swaggering calm.  You know what people used to say when Clare started out in softball?

“She’s got a baseball swing.”  This wasn’t exactly meant as a compliment.  What these coaches meant was that Clare swung as if the ball were coming down at her, the way a curveball might; in softball, pitches tend to rise up at the batter.  I can’t say to what extent she’s adjusted, only that her stance works.  If I ever end up with a ball-playing granddaughter, I’d want her to be just like her mother that way.