Consequences

Nothing comes free in sports, the amateur level included.  Play a sport long enough, and it will stay with you the rest of your life.  At least Clare has memories—and school records—to ease the pain.

Hit, run, catch—where’s the risk in that?  Provided the hitter doesn’t get hit with a pitch, the runner doesn’t get his/her spikes caught on a base, and the fielder doesn’t run into anything or anybody, then probably not much.  Maybe.  What got Clare a torn labrum, I think, was the throwing, as early as eighth grade.

The travel team then wanted her to play shortstop; it was the only time I ever saw my daughter struggle in athletics.  Ask her to hit with two strikes and two outs or leave her feet to catch a ball, no problem.  But in the spring and summer of 2006, she just couldn’t field a ball cleanly at short.  Clare acted as more of a goalie, stopping the shot and then picking it up.  To say that she then fired the throw to first is no cliché.  I felt sorry for the first baseman.  The damage was probably done before she played her first high school varsity game.

That means my daughter played with a significant injury for eight years.  She was a starter each and every spring, missing a total of five games in that time to sickness and family obligation.  So, don’t tell me women athletes can’t handle pain.  Our soon-to-be 25-year old now has to make a decision.  The surgeon says that as things stand, she can have an out-patient procedure, but if she dislocates her shoulder, they’ll have to go in with the big knives and forks.  “You decide.”

And so we remember the time in senior year high school when Clare hit a ball so hard she tore the stitching on the cover (it was a homerun) and sophomore year college when she a ball in the conference playoffs that nearly sailed into eternity.  At the time, pain was an afterthought.