Fungo Face.



Source: http://www.americanfitness.net/



When I was a sophomore in high school I pretty much had life figured out. Just kidding, but I was a manager for the Boys Baseball team. It was a pretty sweet gig. I got to manage with my best friends Amy and Becky. We liked to think that we did a lot of important and helpful things, but really all we did was fill a 5 gallon cooler with ice and water and then struggle to carry it from the locker room to the baseball field.

Boy did we struggle. Even though I played soccer, I had no upper body strength that was hatsoever beneficial to carrying that beast. Plus have you seen the handles on those things? There really was no convenient way to carry it. The cooler was either too heavy to carry alone or too awkward to carry with two people. We would beg the trainer who had the sweet golf cart to let us put the cooler on his cart and drive to the field but that would only happen a handful of times.

By the end of our first season with the team, I think the boys felt really bad for us because they started carrying the cooler to the field themselves.... or they probably got sick of us complaining.

But when I think back to those baseball days there is one memory that really stands out. It was a couple weeks into the start of our very first season. Amy, Becky and I were glued to each other's hips and were often found sitting on the bleachers or off to the side giggling like HS girls do in a room full of boys. One day we were at the gym in Recreation Center that was just behind the high school to watch them practice. At the time I actually worked at the Rec Center a few nights a week so I knew all the ins-and-outs of the place and had keys to everything. This would prove to be very useful.

So there we sat, on top of a table that was used for score keepers for basketball games. Somehow we got our hands on a bat and somehow I got sole custody of that bat.

 I didn't know it at the time but it was a fungo bat. As we sat upon the table chatting away, one of the players made the motion of throwing a tennis ball at us. Being naive and cocky as hell, as HS girls can be, I yelled back to him to *really* throw it.

I brought the bat back into the "ready position" and prepared for the throw. If I recall correctly, Amy moved out of the way. That probably should’ve been my first clue that something about this wasn’t going to work.

Well I didn’t take into account the laws of physics or common sense really, and when the ball was lobbed to me… I swung away…. To this day I’m not sure if I even hit the ball or whiffed it, but I do know for a fact I had a solid swing and I made contact with something…

I made contact with Becky’s face. Specifically and *luckily?* her forehead. Before I knew what I had done I could hear Becky saying (or yelling maybe?) a muffled “Oooomygodmyfaceoooo”. I instantly panicked and got super embarrassed for hitting my friend in the face.

 I tried to make the situation better by running to the storage room in the Rec Center where we had an ice machine and made a baggy of ice for her to apply to her face.

I remember as I brought the bag of ice over to her I could already see the lump on her forehead. Somewhere in or around that moment the guys on the team started calling her “Fungo Face”. Oh and did I mention that our sophomore semi-formal was the following weekend? Yup. I think someone made a comment about how lucky she was that I didn’t hit her in the mouth and break her teeth. I got that feeling in the pit of my stomach, full of guilt, but all I could say was “Ya… but its ok mom’s a dentist and she would’ve fixed it” (Unfortunately this wouldn’t be the only time I’d say that) (Oh and I should note, my mom isn’t actually a dentist, she’s a dental assistant…not that that is a bad thing, its just ya know... not the *same* thing)

Anywho… after the incident if I recall correctly, the lump on her forehead went away before the semi-formal, but the name lived on for quite a while. I visited Becky last year in Moab and she asked if I remembered people calling her fungo face… and oh… I did. Thank god we laughed retelling the story...