Today's fortune: December 23, 2011

Today's fortune: You have great physical powers and an iron constitution.
This fortune reminds me of my greatest moment in sports. I'm not talking about the time my youth league baseball team was down by two runs heading into the last inning of a playoff game; the first batter of the inning hit a home run, I followed up with a double, and the batter after me drove me in and won the game with a walk-off home run. And I'm not talking about the time my kindergarten soccer team won first place with me as the team's goalie. And I'm not talking about the time I shot a 36 on a par-3, nine-hole golf course (by far my best golf score ever).

I'm talking about the time my great physical powers turned me into an iron frickin' immovable object.

When Jamie and I lived in Maryville, Missouri, I played on an adult men's softball team. Our team was pretty bad; in fact, I don't remember ever winning a game. But we had fun, and that should be the whole point of adult softball, isn't it?

But every once in a while, we'd run into a team that was serious about winning. These teams were mostly made up of young guys right out of college who weren't good enough to play competitive baseball, so they worked out their frustration crushing older, fatter opponents in softball who were just looking to have a good time on a Saturday afternoon.

One time we ran up against one of these teams, and the ringleader was a short fellow who must have been a bodybuilder. He was solid muscle. He could hit the ball far and run very quickly, and only his mouth surpassed his athletic prowess. Before the end of the first inning, I hated the guy.

I was playing first base that game. One time, the guy was at bat and he hit a hard ground ball to our shortstop, who threw the ball over to me for an easy out. But the muscle-bound batter decided he was going to make it hard for me. Instead of running for the base, he broke protocol and dipped inside the baseline, with the intention of running into me, knocking me over and dislodging the ball from my glove.

The guy was a real prince.

But he didn't plan on what happened next. When the guy plowed into me, I didn't move. Not even an inch. Both his legs came off the ground for a second before he fell backward to the earth.

I felt like the canyon wall in a Roadrunner cartoon, and my sincerest hope is that the guy felt like Wile E Coyote, running into that wall on rocket-powered roller skates.

It was out number three. I helped the little bastard off the ground and said, "You all right, big guy?" Then I casually flipped the ball toward the umpire and jogged to the dugout.