This week I’m stepping down as president of our church softball league. I’ve been the man in charge for 4 years now, and I’ve had enough. I’m ready to move on to smaller and less significant things, like just playing.
It seems appropriate that I’m stepping down after 4 years because I’ve always felt like my role as Softball President is very similar to that of the President of the United States. In fact, in some ways it can be more stressful. Being the POTUS is a full-time job that pays reasonably well. My roles as President doesn’t pay anything, and I have to use my free time to get things done.
So which role is better? Let’s compare…
• The U.S. President has to worry about illegal immigrants sneaking into the country. I have to worry about teams sneaking non church-members onto their rosters. Advantage: POTUS (Trust me, it’s ten times harder to police church rosters than the Mexican border.)
• The U.S. President has to provide money and manpower to help clean up natural disasters. I have to send out scathing emails when my managers leave Gatorade bottles and sunflower seed packages strewn about the dugout after games. Advantage: Softball Pres. (It’s hard work pretending to be outraged by localized littering, but natural disasters are obviously much more difficult to deal with.)
• The U.S. President can declare National holidays whenever he feels like it. I get to schedule my team’s games at the fields and times that work best for us. Advantage: POTUS (Scheduling power is amazing, but that goes out the window when most of our games in April and May get rained out. By July I’m asking teams to play 6am games before work. Thunderstorms have been the bane of my existence.)
• The U.S. President has to handle political pressure from tobacco lobbyists. I have to handle managers who complain that someone on the other team was smoking cigarettes in the parking lot. Advantage: Softball Pres. (It’s fun when someone thinks you have the power to stop other people from smoking. It’s also fun to explain that while I don’t recommend it, you can smoke cigarettes and still love God.)
• The U.S. President has to juggle a busy schedule meeting with ambassadors of countries and enjoying vacations in the Rockies. I have to juggle our league’s schedule for teams with names like the Worship Center Ambassadors and the Petra Rockies. Advantage: POTUS (Have I mentioned that scheduling 11 teams at 3 fields for 15 weeks is a bear? It is.)
• The U.S. President can tell anyone in the country what to do and they have to listen. I can tell anyone in our softball league what to do and they will at least consider it before doing whatever they want. Advantage: POTUS (Although, the nice thing about being the Softball President is that news stations aren’t polling people for approval ratings every month.)
In the end I guess being President of the U.S. is a better job, but then again, Barack Obama will never get an email like this one I got a few years ago:
Last year in the playoffs we had problems with [name withheld] coming to the games and sitting in the parking lot blasting his radio before and during the games it was a big distraction and upset the fans and players, also the fact that this is a church league and he was listening to sexular [sic] music didn’t help the matter any. We would like to see correct action take place for it.
Church Softball…it’s FAN-tastic!
What about you? Got any stories to share from recreational church sporting events?
I’d love to hear ’em.