Beantown Softball readies for 2008 season

Dust off those cleats, grease up your mitt with a little Glove Loogie and break out the Ben-Gay. The Beantown Softball League (BSL) will host its annual clinic day April 5 at Smith Field in Allston at noon. It's the open registration for new players looking to join the Beantown Softball League, an organization that welcomes LGBT and straight men and women onto the softball diamond.

Clinic Day offers prospective players a chance to display their skills for teams looking to fill out their rosters and to scout out which teams they'd be interested in joining. Participants will take the field for batting practice and fielding drills. After that, players will retire to Fritz, where drinking practice is optional. The rain date for Clinic Day is April 6.

The only thing prospective players need to bring to Clinic Day is "a good attitude," said BSL Secretary Chris Hagberg. "A healthy, fun attitude [and] hopefully a glove, good running shoes, cleats if possible. And that's it really."
The BSL also hopes to create a few new teams with recruits who show up to Clinic Day, said Hagberg. "Every year we try to form one new team, hopefully two new teams - a successful Clinic Day would be two new teams - and potentially three," he said.

Seventeen teams took the field during BSL's 2007 season. Hagberg said that even before Clinic Day, there are 21 teams ready to take the field in 2008. So what's with the increasing interest in bats, balls, and getting to second base? Said Hagberg, who's gearing up for his sixth season with BSL, "Softball is [played] outside, it's athletic and I think, personally, it's one of the greatest friend-making vehicles in the city right now for gay folks."

And while BSL welcomes non-gay players, its emphasis is on ensuring that LGBT people are comfortable in the dugout. A team of 20 may have no more than three straight players on its roster and no more than 20 percent non-gay players on the field at one time, according to BSL by-laws. The cap was created, said Hagberg, because "for a lot of gay people, growing up you never really felt like you could be a part of a sport group because there was so much animosity towards homosexuals. Just look at professional sports today; God forbid somebody comes out of the closet, people just freak out. Especially in a team sport atmosphere. So for a lot of us it's a comfort level thing."

For more information on joining the Beantown Softball League, contact Chris Hagberg at [email protected].