My Big Brothers

I spent Sat. morning and had lunch with 11 of my big brothers.  These are not brothers by blood but my, yes my, senior men's softball team.  My husband's first love was baseball and after he "aged" out of baseball he started playing slow pitch softball.  He played (and loved) softball most of his adult life.  When he turned 55 years old he started playing senior softball in senior games (senior olympics).  He started on a team that was a combination of Montgomery and Stanly Counties and was one of the original players on the original team.  In 2006 he started playing with a team out of Moore Co. and was part of that team until his death in 2009.  Now why are they my team you might ask.  Because every year that he played I was the scorekeeper for whichever team he played on.  And at the risk of bragging I am very good at it.  When I have umpires no matter where we play come to me after games and thank me for the job that I do, then I can claim this.  This team of old guys (and most of them are 65 and over) asked me after his death if I was still going to help them.  And as I love the game almost as much as Bobby did I naturally said yes.  So on Sat. morning we had a double header in Albemarle and so there I am with 11 (there are about 15 of them total) of my  "big brothers".  We all kinda got a kick out of the looks we were getting at lunch as I was the only woman with this group of older men.  I guess they were wondering the same thing one of our new players this year when he asked me (after a couple of games), "just what is your connection with this ballteam."  They are my big brothers and my friends.  It was kinda cute last year when one of them asked to talk to me by myself.  He wanted to tell me that some of them had talked and they had decided that it was ok if I wanted to date but they wanted to reassure me that if anybody I dated hurt me they were "going to whip their ass".  Everybody should be blessed with protectors like that.