I am a part-time, oftentimes fraudulent ringer. If you’re not familiar with the term, it refers to someone of a decent level of skill who joins a team on a part-time basis and increases their chances of winning. There’s a hint of fraud attached to the word, because ringers are not regular members of a team but hired guns brought on to achieve victory and, in the end, attract the ladies.

(A picture of me playing softball for my legitimate team - undated)

I make an excellent ringer in the following sports: street hockey, broomball and jai alai. For all other sports, all bets are off.

Last weekend, my friend, who I’ll refer to as Andy, asked me to temporarily join his recreation league softball team for a doubleheader to ensure they had enough bodies to avoid a forfeit. I was an obvious choice, being a sporty guy among an Ypsilanti talent pool rich with hipsters, baristas and regionally touring indie rockers. I am relatively fit, have a job in athletics and possess oversized calves. The truth is that on my own recreation league softball team, I am somewhere around the 17th best player on a 19-player team on a roster including at least one 40-year old, two men over 250lbs and an aspiring actor. I hit better than .300 just once in four years, which is a hard baseline to fall under in the lowest league of Ann Arbor slow pitch softball that exisits.

Andy wasn’t aware of my stats and I didn’t want to let him and his team down, so I borrowed a baseball glove (did I mention I’m so athletic that I don’t own any athletic gear), poured myself into a smedium sized team t-shirt and tried to look the part of a longtime member of the team to blend in with the watchful eyes of the umpire and the opposing team on me. In my league, players need to register ahead of time to join a team and getting caught as a ringer is punishable by forfeit and sometimes a parking lot beatdown.

The only two players I knew on my new team were Andy and Andy’s Texan friend, another ringer brought in to shore up numbers, achieve victory and attract the ladies. Over the course of the next 20 minutes, 10 other men wearing the same t-shirt as me showed up, all on the regular roster. We were the only two frauds.

The Texan put it best. “I don’t care if we win, I just don’t want to screw up.”

That is the fraudulent ringer’s credo. You want to follow the Hippocratic Oath, while looking relatively competent in the process. The key in softball is defense. Volunteer for a position that either gets very little action or plays to your strengths. For instance, if you’re good at squatting, be the catcher. Good at talking. Catcher. Sweat when you eat? Catcher. I chose to play third base because I am terrible at judging fly balls and balls hit to third usually come very fast, so if you miss a few, a lot of your teammates will just assume no one could have gotten it, especially if you purse your lips and shake your head a little.

Our first opponents were Dave and Buster’s (all team names changed to protect the wicked). Opponent scouting reports are hard to come by, but a sure sign that someone is serious about their slow pitch softball is if they are wearing baseball pants. Baseball pants protect your legs when you slide, and only true diehards (or fraudulent ringers trying not to look foolish in front of their false teammates) slide in slow pitch softball. This team was baseball pant free, which was a good sign, and a few of their male members looked pregnant, also usually a good sign.

I was inserted last in the batting order in deference to the dues paying members of the team and the Texan, who looked faster than me. I fielded a ball early and actually made an out, but undid all my good deeds by grounding out in my first at-bat. Our pitcher yelled at me in the second inning, a ball rolled under my glove in the third and I was free-falling out of favor with my mates. My tight borrowed t-shirt began itching horribly. Then I managed a base hit, followed by some good defense and then a second hit. It helped that our team was playing so collectively bad that my minor misdeeds were going unnoticed. Even when I grounded out to short for the final out of the game, no one felt it glare-worthy. I think our right fielder may have even bro hugged me.

I was still nervous to begin game two, this contest against a World of Warcraft team. Some of these guys had baseball pants and their pitcher had a ginger goatee and wraparound shades. In rec league softball terms, those are signs of skill or intensity, neither of which I was prepared to face. Versus this new opponent, I went 3-for-3 at the plate and played such sparkling defense that even the opponents felt the need to pay their respects. By the end of the game I had received plenty of high fives from my new pals and a few nice-to-meet-yous, almost enough to make a pulled butt muscle worth the ordeal.

For those interested in playing rec league sports, I suggest you take the time and money to play for your own legitimate team made up of friends, coworkers or members of the massive multiplayer online role playing game community. The city of Ann Arbor fields a number of leagues in a variety of sports at varying skill levels. The extra expense of setting up your own team is worth not having to wear someone else’s t-shirt alone, not to mention not having to play under the real or perceived scrutiny of some guys who look like they want to kick your ass if you boot a ball at third. Trust me - the life of a ringer is a lonely one. I just hope they don’t ask me back for the playoffs.

Do you have any good ringer stories you want to share? Rich wants to read them. Email him at richretyi@gmail.com or look into the bathroom mirror at midnight and say his name three times.