My Retirement Announcement

Last week I sent the following announcement to my softball team. It's the end of an era, friends. After 27 years of softball I'm hanging up the cleats. Of course I reserve the right, ala Roger Clemmens, to load up on the steroids and come back out of retirement. Never say never.

"Friends, for the past year and a half you have been hearing about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest woman on the face of this earth. I have been in poorly unkempt softball fields for ...a really, really, really long time now and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you friends. "Look at these grand men and women. Which of you wouldn't consider it the highlight of her career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I'm lucky. Who wouldn't consider it an honor to have known Mike Leyden? Also, the builder of softball's greatest empire, Coach Voys? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Lou Chaney? And to have spent three years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best hitting coach in softball today, Greg Nice? Sure, I'm lucky.

"When the ITS Rebels, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, tells you that you can come play with them any time - that's something. When everybody down to the ITLDPers and our bartender, Marianne, remember you with pints of beers - that's something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own son (sometimes) - that's something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body - it's a blessing. When you have a husband who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed - that's the finest I know.

"So I close in saying that I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for."