Softball is Signing a Lease

Softball is many things. Today, softball is signing a lease.

My sister and I get goosebumps on our necks and backs. It had been an arduous search but we finally found it: Our dream home for rent.

Perfect location: Check!

Basement for my dog, Jack Bauer: Check!

Yard for JB: Check!

Three Bedrooms: Check!

Open Concept: Check!

…And the list went on and on.

 

In softball, it´s critical to pay attention to the details. I learned that what separated myself from the other players on my team, what elevated my level, what made me the best, was my ability to recognize the nuances of the game, the details. I could anticipate what pitch was coming my way by paying attention to the grip on the ball in the pitcher´s hand. I knew to take three steps in when my pitcher threw a change-up because it probably meant that she´d hit a duck snort out to short center. I knew when a girl would pop up because her shoulder kept dropping and she was pulling her hands.

If a game of softball is a complex text, I am an expert reader.

 

My mother, on the other hand, is an expert reader of contracts. So, when it came time to sit down to review the lease, she took the field. First of all, the contract HAD to be printed. Read on a tablet? Goodness no. She´s a paper and pen kind of woman. With the contract in had, my mother started off the first inning. The first line set the pace of the entire game:

Name of town on contract: Boiling Brooke 

Actual name of town: Bolingbrook

*slap on forehead*

To put it delicately, the lease had a few errors. My mom picked up on details I would´ve never thought to notice. The smallest nuances that, to the expert reader, was the difference between a winning and a losing contract. I respected her eye because her expertise led to a thrice revised, winning lease.

What made me an expert softball player was not just my fundamentals. No, my mother couldn´t teach me how to throw a softball. No, she couldn´t show me how to hit a pitch. What she could do, however, was teach me how to pay attention to details. She taught me how to pay attention to the wind, so that when the ball went in the air I knew which way it would hook. She taught me how to pay attention to where the outfielders shifted, because if they took two steps to their right I knew that pitch was coming outside. She taught me how to read the game like she read the terms of a lease.

Softball is many things. Today, softball is signing a lease.