It was my first game back in 2025 after having been ill and reversing my decision to sit out the season. The team I play with was getting destroyed, for no good reason except they seem to have reverted to making poor in-game decisions (not knowing what base to throw the ball to, for example), and it was very hard to watch. They “advanced” up a division, and they seem to think the standard of play is significantly better, but that’s really not the case. If they simply played as well as they are capable of, they would be winning without much effort. The game should be slowing down for them – it is slow pitch softball, there’s a lot of time to think about what you should be doing – but this free time is not being used effectively. They only lack experience, confidence, and on-the-field leadership.

What a mistake returning was, and ultimately it is my fault. There seems to be little desire to win, or to simply play better, or do things in what I would consider “the right way” administratively, the clearest example is to not abuse the legality of batting 12 in the lineup by adding two additional men to an otherwise even gender split. It is just as easy to include additional players as substitutes and swap in and out during the game. These are issues I will have to shut my mouth about, apparently, if I want to continue to play, as there is no appetite to care about this sort of thing.

And yet, for this event, the opposing team 1) failed to arrive by the scheduled start time, 2) failed to have a team in place after the allotted 20mins for lateness had elapsed, 3) the umpire failed to enforce this rule (which should have awarded our team the win), and finally 4) the opposing team then submitted an illegal lineup of 12 players + an “exemption” player from another team, starting the game with fewer than even the minimum required (because they hadn’t showed up yet) and simply added them into the lineup as they arrived. This is all before the game even officially starts!

During the game, there were an abundance of missed calls. We’re not talking about judgements or “balls and strikes”, which is expected to a degree, nobody is perfect and these things happen. But these were really simple yet important things: failing to call an “infield fly”, failing to make any call on a foul pop that the base coach batted down with his hands as the 3B defender is about to catch it, failing to make any call on a batter that took three running steps forward out of the batter’s box toward the pitcher to hit the ball… all creating confusion, disarray, and a seriously unsafe playing environment.

Ironically, the League had just reminded all teams to treat umpires with respect, to respect the game, and so on. Is selectively ignoring some rules, not understanding the basics of others, and failing to enforce them, a good example of “respecting the game”?

Our team also fielded a 12 player batting lineup, with the two extra men. While legal, we all by now know how I feel about this. This was purposefully hidden from me before the game, and it did not become apparent until after I thought I was substituted out, yet to my surprise I was called to bat. I continued my participation in the game, having been fooled by the team captain, to avoid forfeiting the game by leaving (because there would be no substitute player to replace me, this is another rule most people are not aware of). Clearly this would have been upsetting to the whole team, there was no reason to make a very bad situation even worse – so I bit my tongue and played on, albeit badly.

Here’s where the “I told you so” part comes: as part of a post-game protest filed to enforce the rules around fielding an illegal lineup of 12 players while including an “exemption” player from another team, the League pointed out “for clarification” that our lineup was also a batting lineup of 12 players. While this should not impact the legality of the opposing team’s infraction, it will certainly impact the League’s decision to rule in our favor, as they are judging if there was any advantage gained by violating the rules. Because we also enjoyed a gender biased 12 player lineup (though in our case it was legal as there was no “exemption” player included), the League may very well find that there was no real advantage gained by our opposition’s rule violation.

Doing things the right way is one way to ensure things are done right. Instead, being sneaky, letting your opponent abuse your goodwill by choosing to ignore some rules as it suits them, gaslighting others by telling them they’re the ones being unreasonable or “disrespectful” by simply wanting to play by the rules, or that they’re being “too uptight” and “why do you care so much?”, is all a bit too much to bear; and in this case it will probably end up showing who’s the real doormat.