The Chris Gonyea Project

I had been in a little slump at the plate the past for past couple of games, which is pretty hard to do when your playing slow pitch softball in a coed league. I kept dropping my right shoulder when swinging the back, which mean a lot of weak contact and pop-ups (ie: I was doing my best imitation of a golf swing, even on pitches that are chest level).

After a two week break due to the 4th of July, we had our first game on Tuesday and I absolutely stunk. Batting practice was horrific since my timing was off and I kept dropping my shoulder. The actual game was even worse. Three weak ground balls for outs and a lazy fly ball to left field.

So I wasn’t feeling too hot going into today, since it would be our second game in three days. However, I guess the fact of seeing live pitches twice in three days really helped me. After a couple of practice swings, I took batting practice and magically stopped dropping my shoulder (it is actually much harder to do then it sounds). A slight adjustment forward in the batter’s box and I was hitting hard line drives to left field like I had been in the batting cage for a week straight.

Fast forwarding to the game, I had a spectacular day at the plate. 2-2 with a single, double, and a fielder’s choice. Each hit was a very hard drive to left field. Several people said I had a perfect swing both times. My team was tied 6-6 going into extra innings before we lost, but it was a spectacular game that kept going back and forth.

Just like baseball, when you break out of a slump in softball, you cannot help but smile. Now we just gotta start winning again.