FWB Friends With Baseball

Media Frenzy.

Jailyn~

Taking a drink of the water I was given, I listen as Jared introduces me as a guest on his podcast with Barstool. "I'm joined with Jailyn James, a twenty-year-old college sophomore, who was just recently named as a member of Team USA's softball team, that will be competing in Tokyo in the upcoming 2020 Olympics. Jailyn, how are you?"

"I'm good," I reply, smiling as I sit up in the seat, "Life has gotten a little crazier for me now than I'm used to, but it's a pretty incredible reason why."

"I'm not sure anyone would disagree with you there," Jared answers chuckling. "I'm just going to go right into it. You've got one of the craziest stat lines that I've ever seen."

"Do I?" I ask. As much as I might know that I do, I'm curious if they actually got it right.

"Uh, yeah," He replies, scoffing slightly, "In your first season at the colligate level, in seventy-four plate appearances, you put up a .661 batting average."

"Yep," I confirm.

"You were slugging at a 1.531."

"That sounds right," I nod.

"You had a stolen base percentage of .882," He says, shaking his head. "Then to top it off, you were as likely to hit a home run as you were to strike out, with thirteen each."

"I'm pretty sure you got them all," I reply, "I'm pretty sure my fielding percentage was .973."

"That's what I've got here," Jared confirms, "How the hell do you do it?"

Shaking my head, "I don't really know. I've seen the ball really well this season, better than I have in my life. Everything just seemed to click, I think. My coach has also been incredible too, so I owe a lot of that to her."

"Softball hasn't ever really been a hitters sport," Jared comments, "You seem like you're about to be the one to change that. More often, you hear about the Jennie Finch's and the Monica Abbotts, these crazy pitchers who are seemingly almost untouchable. What are you thinking about that now that you could very easily become a name like that?"

Blowing a raspberry out of my lips, I shake my head, "It's insane. Never in a million years did I really think I'd be in this position. Getting to even interact with Monica now and Jennie, it's been so insane. I think there's a lot that I have to prove to get my name in the likes of theirs. I've got one college season under my belt after taking nearly two years off away from the sport. Like yeah, my numbers were great this past season, playing college softball, but this is now the Olympic level. Instead of facing pitchers hitting, maybe, sixty-seven at their absolute best, I'm going to be facing pitchers hitting that as their regular speed and hitting up to seventy-five in some cases."

"You've gotten a chance to meet Jennie Finch?"

"Yeah," I reply, chuckling a little, remembering how that came to be. "Even with my numbers being where they were, I didn't really believe that I was ready to be in this position. My coach, Cathy back in Milwaukee, was an assistant coach with the Bandits for a while when Jennie was playing for them. When I was sort of going back and forth about if I was going to the Trials or not, Cathy invited Jennie to come pitch for me. She had me take about twenty pitches off of her, and I only missed five."

"That's incredible," Jared says, "You hit fifteen off of Jennie Finch, arguably the greatest softball pitcher of all time, and I heard you almost didn't go to the trials?"

Laughing, I shake my head, "Not exactly."

"Go into that for me. What do you mean by not exactly?"

"After I hit off of Jennie, there wasn't as much of a question of if I was going to the trials. It was more of a question on how I was going to handle everything that came with going. Before, I mentioned that I'd taken two years off before walking on last season. This wasn't really something I had as a goal because it'd never felt realistic. Sure, I'd always been good, but I never had a ton of playing time in high school and had sort of given it up when I quit my senior year. When the idea of going to the trials was presented to me, I didn't really feel like I'd earned it. That was my biggest apprehension then. That and that day happened to be the same day that Instagram video was posted."