An Amateur Softball Team Changed My Life

Like many Americans, I spent my youth playing sports — baseball, ice hockey, football. But the demands of work and concerns about injury without adequate insurance led me to abandon my childhood passions.

I came out of sports retirement when I turned 35. After moving from the United States to Scotland I joined the Haar Hitters, one of 10 teams in Edinburgh’s coed slow-pitch softball league. (In Scotland, “haar” refers to the fog rolling in from the North Sea.)

The Haar Hitters were mostly Brits who’d never held a softball and a few American expats past their heyday. We were a so-so team stuck in the weaker of two league divisions.

What started as a weekly diversion would become my gateway to building intergenerational friendships, getting fit and familiarizing myself with my new country. Even while living in Scotland, I learned useful lessons for my home country, too.

America is a country of sports lovers who don’t play sports. Yet adult recreation leagues can be an inexpensive solution to so many of the things that worry us: that we don’t have friends, that we’re out of shape and that we’re losing our vigor. According to a 2015 poll, while 73 percent of Americans played sports as kids, only 25 percent continue to do so as adults.

When the pandemic struck, half our players quit and the captain resigned. Another teammate and I took over and I soon realized that we had a golden opportunity to reinvent the team. When pandemic restrictions lifted, everyone in our city wanted to interact again. We had more recruits at our practices than we could take on.