The Desi Nationals

Chethan and I were sitting around watching a basketball game last month, and Chethan was like, we could be playing softball and start a team.. play co-ed so the girls get to shake a leg and an arm.. It got some adrenaline flowing, Chethan followed up on that, and he got a team registered in the San Jose summer co-ed league. yay! And check this out.. our team is aptly named "The Desi Nationals".

Now that the softball is gonna be a reality, we needed to form a team. Apart from Chethan and his little bro Apurva, none of the other friends who signed up had played. Yup, great start that. The other draft picks (who have swung their arms a wee bit): Greg, my P.A.Semi neighbor (he has played plenty and some), and Sammy/Karthik's friends Anjali and Amit. Anjali was a star recruit to the Desi Nationals, and yup, we got ourselves a team.

Team-members: Chethan (Captn/Coach), Apurva, Greg, Srivalli, Dumma, Leena, Sammy, Karthik, Amar, Anjali, Amit, Robert, Preethi, Srisha, Preetu and me. Thats 16, which makes up our roster. And our ball-boy is Rishon.

Practice session 1: We visited a softball batting cage in Santa Clara, and with Coach Chet guiding us, we try to shake off the cricket batting action, and try to do the softball thingie. All I can say is, playing softball is much harder than I thought. A visit to the Santa Clara Univ baseball field, and Chethan took us thro' catching, throwing, and batting basics. A couple of hours later we were done, and we were a tired lot. Now we know what first, second, third and home bases are, and ditto with short-stop, deep-fielders, yada yada yada, and yada yada yada. Long ways to go before the July 24th, when the first game will be played.

Practice session 2: Since all of us bought new softball gloves (man, these things are biiiig), we needed to break into them, we got together on the same field, and played ball. We cricketers, used to catching with bare hands, have a lot of un-learning to do. Gloves make catching much easier, especially stopping the ball, and throwing it to base. The softball is much bigger, so throwing aint that eazy either. And how do we do the chicken pose again? :)