Owa Tafoo Lye-am

"Play like an old man," Beth always reminds me before I head to play softball.

"I will," I say.

I have every intention of keeping that promise in the abstract. I know that I'm the oldest guy on the team, and there's no need for me to dive after ground balls or run my hardest around the bases. It's a very laid-back league and nobody will really care if I don't give 100% effort.

But once I get on the field, I'm not so practical. I'm not much more than a singles hitter, but I pride myself on my defense. I try and get to every ball that's close to me, whether in the infield or outfield. I dive, lunge and hustle to the best of my ability.

After injuring myself in the first game of the season (see April 25, 2015, "My Favorite Pastime"), I took a few games off, and once I returned I took it relatively easy. I was feeling good about my fielding and hitting.

Last night was our first game in a few weeks, and I was excited. "Just stick to playing third base," I told myself. "You don't have to move too much."

But our team was shorthanded, so I ended up switching between the hot corner and the outfield. That was fine for the first five innings (one of which I sat out because, well, I don't know, rules of some sort about not having enough women on our team). In the bottom of the sixth I jogged out to right field, figuring not much would get hit to me.

Well, you know where this story is going. A right handed batter slices one between me and the foul line, and I take two steps, reach out my glove and feel a jolt of pain in my right groin/hip/upper leg. I hit the ground and know I can't get up. The center fielder backs up the play but the guy rounds the bases. I limp off the field and trade places with the designated sitter.

I stretch and try to walk it off for a few minutes while the other team bats. I know this won't do any good, but I have to try. Then it's our turn to bat, and I have to try that as well.

I come to bat with the tying run on second base and two outs. I hit a hard grounder to third, but two steps out of the box and I can't go any further. I'm out, the game is over, and I feel stupid.

I slept like crap last night, a cocktail of pain, self pity and inward-directed anger swirling through my body. I tell myself I have to stop playing softball, period. I'm a fool to think that I'm not going to keep hurting myself, especially after having had hip surgery (see August 1, 2013, "On the Mend").

But then I move around, and while my groin/adductor muscles are still quite sore, and I'm shuffling like a zombie, I begin to see that I have another game or two or three in my near future. I realize that if I play smart -- really smart this time, not just abstract smart -- I can continue to enjoy the game and the fun that goes along with it.

Maybe some day soon I'll be able to hit 'em like this guy:

My Favorite Pastime

That's me up there, in 2009 before the last baseball game of my illustrious career. A teammate took that shot of me prior to our game in Cooperstown, aka the home of the Baseball Hall of Fame. I played in one game of a tournament on the same field where they filmed parts of "A League of Their Own." Known as Doubleday Field, the diamond was built in 1920 and has hosted games of all sorts, including some regular season Major League exhibition matches, throughout the years. I felt honored to play on the field, but bummed because my appearance there marked the end of a five-year period where I returned to hardball after 25 years away from my favorite sport.

I stopped playing because it just wasn't right for me to disappear for a summer's worth of Sundays when I had two young kids. When I returned to the game at age 40, my son, Owen, was three. Two years later, my daughter was born. After five years, I considered joining another league that played weeknights, but opted out after Owen decided he wanted to play Little League. I coached his team and didn't know if I could commit to night baseball while overseeing his team.

Prior to my five-year return to America's national pastime, I played softball for a few years with my wife, Beth, and her father, Rich. I really liked playing, but as I crept toward 40, I harkened back to my youth, and my favorite game: baseball. I played Little League and Babe Ruth for seven years, and sandlot baseball seemingly from birth until I went away to college. I was never much of a hitter, but I prided myself on my defense.

I made two All-Star teams, one in Little League and one in Babe Ruth. I have no problem telling you that the reason I made the Babe Ruth team was because my best friend's father coached the team.

All of this is a long way of telling you, my faithful follower(s?) that last night I got back on a softball field for the first time in more than a decade.

Recruited by a neighbor, I joined a team with the unfortunate name of Awesomesauce. The only time on a field I had before the game was a brief batting practice last weekend with two neighbors and one other teammate. Felt good to be out there, which made me excited for a game.

I had no idea how much I would play, or what position. Mostly, I thought about not hurting myself. Every season I played hardball I managed to tweak something: a hamstring, a quad, a groin. One year I got spiked and hobbled around for a few games afterward.

I went to the gym yesterday morning, focused on stretching, a bit of cardio and not too much strength work. And of course, I managed to tweak my left adductor muscle doing an exercise I should have been smart enough to avoid.

Last night was a cold one for softball, but I was happy to be at Hoyt Field in Cambridge, a diamond I never knew existed although it's only 15 minutes from home. My teammates are all nice, and the game started well with us scoring a bunch of runs. I knocked in a run with a single in my first at-bat. I made a few plays at shortstop, and knocked down a ball that prevented a run from scoring (although that run and a few others scored later in the inning).

Trouble came in my second time at the plate. I hit a grounder to third and had to hustle down the line. About halfway down the base path that tweaked muscle announced to me that I was perhaps a fool to be doing what I was doing. I limped across the bag a second after the ball hit the first baseman's mitt.

I played in the field again, and had one more at-bat, during which I hobbled around the bases and managed to score a run. By that time, however, our team was down by quite a few. We lost to a team with a lot of big hitters.

I'm bummed about the injury, but hoping I can nurse it along with stretching, Advil, whiskey and taking myself out of the action a bit more. I had surgery two years ago to clean out torn cartilage in my left hip. My hip/lower back/upper leg nexus are weak and aren't gonna get any better. My right hip has begun to feel sore lately. If I can't play more than a few games this season, that'll be it for me.

It sucks that the older we get, the harder we have to work to do something as simple and fun as play softball. Last night I watched balls fly over my head, deep into left field, and thought, "Man, five years ago I could've run that ball down." My father-in-law played softball well into his 60s, and many of the guys from my hardball team are still chugging along well into their 50s and 60s, so hope is alive in them.

I know, I know. Sounds like I'm making too much of an injury. But it's a nagging one that has plagued me off and on for quite some time, and there's nothing I can do to make it better. Rest, stretch, baby it a bit. Maybe look into hip replacement or bionic adductor surgery....

Hip

Yes, I know that based on the title of this post, you're expecting a treatise on the latest cool music or beard style or organically raised vegetable I've discovered or cultivated or raised.

But, no, this entry is all about aging and the breakdown of the physical body. Or at least about how a guy with flat feet, a repaired Achilles tendon and a family history of leg and back issues is dealing with turning 48.

Nearly two weeks ago I was diagnosed with a labral tear in my left hip. I'd been experiencing pain in my left adductor/groin area since November 2011, after training for and running a half marathon. Over the next 10 months or so I alternately rested, went for walks or short runs and went to the gym. The pain in my groin, and sometimes in my hip and lower back, persisted.

Finally, last fall I went to my primary care doctor for an annual physical. He didn't have much to say about my groin pain, other than, "I think your running career is over. That's OK, you can swim."

I needed more information and clarity, so I made an appointment at a sports medicine practice. The orthopedist there took X-rays, which didn't show anything. He prescribed 6-8 weeks of physical therapy.

Although I was complaining of adductor discomfort, the therapist figured that my hip was the problem. He began to focus his efforts on that area, as well as my lower back. After going twice a week for six weeks, I wasn't noticing any improvement, so he wrote up his observations and sent me back to the orthopedist.

The ortho told me to get an MRI. That experience was quite a trip, and not in a good way. Oh, it wasn't that bad, but sliding into a giant metallic tube that makes awful, grinding and bumping noises for 25 minutes with nothing to do but contemplate the avant gardiness of it all isn't my idea of fun.

After a week off with Beth and the kids in Vermont, I returned to the ortho to get the MRI results. The good news: "You don't have arthritis in your hip. The bad news: you have a tear in your labrum," which is the soft tissue that holds the ball of your hip joint in its socket.

I was experiencing all of the symptoms: a "catching" sensation in my hip, pain in my groin, stiffness or limited range in the hip joint. I've also been feeling weakness just above my left knee, and sometimes a sense of weakness all the way down to my foot.

And, as of Friday, I've got severe back spasms that make me walk like an old man. I've had pain like this before, but it hasn't been this bad in quite some time. I'm trying not to get too bummed about all of it. I've got an appointment with a hip surgeon at the end of this month, and I'm hopeful that before too long I'll get arthroscopic surgery and be on the road to more normal activities.

I'm not sure I'll return to running, although I'd like to. Perhaps I will have to take up swimming.

None of this comes as a surprise to me. Ever since undergoing surgery in 1998 to repair an Achilles tendon that I ruptured playing basketball, I've known that my left leg was more susceptible to stress and strain than my right. Add to that my two flat feet, weakened abdominal muscles from hernias I had as a kid, and my left leg is under some serious strain.

AND...my father also ripped (but didn't rupture) his Achilles tendon when he was younger (although older than I am now), and has suffered from arthritis and other issues with his back and knees for the last few years at least.

While I'm a bit depressed that I seem to be following in his footsteps at too early an age, I'm confident that surgery and rehab will get me back on track. In the meantime, I need to keep myself in as good a shape as possible, which means doing exercise and strengthening work, and not eating and drinking like a pig.

Now, who wants to talk music, beards and vegetables?