Whacking at my woes

Happy Monday, DMV! It’s May 11.

Sometimes when mired in fury and frustration, I imagine myself walking alongside a waist-high brick wall topped with a tidy row of green glass bottles, spaced just perfectly for me to swing a baseball bat and smash … smash … smash!

I envision the slow-mo explosion of glass, shards flying everywhere. It’s a vivid mental image I’ve conjured for decades, though in real life, I think this would be far too messy and chaotic for me to derive any pleasure or relief.

That said, I love hitting baseballs. I don’t often do it, but I do frequently try to lure friends out to batting cages … to no avail in recent years.

Then my husband told me that while chatting earlier this month with Eric Saul — an architect and satirist who writes the Takoma Torch (Takoma Park’s version of the Onion) — he learned that Eric is assistant varsity baseball coach at Blair High School and a private baseball instructor with a batting cage in his backyard.

My eyes widened, my jaw dropped and a jubilant peal sounded in my head: ding-ding-ding-ding-ding! Bingo.

I’ve struggled for months and felt discombobulated after getting laid off from the Washington Post. Normally when I get stressed or feel unmoored, I become superfit because I turn to sports as a coping mechanism. Yoga. Lately, tennis, too. But I knew that hitting baseballs would truly release any pent-up emotions.

I messaged Eric. I’d met him three months ago, when he and I teamed up to clear a 0.4-mile stretch of “snowcrete”-covered sidewalk after the big ice-and-snow storm.

“I love batting cages!” I typed to him. We set a coffee-and-batting cage date. I biked over on Friday.

Eric plugged in the machine and set it to pitch at 45 miles per hour. (A quick search online tells me this is the speed for kiddos.) He picked a bat with some heft and a nicely padded grip. Then I went to it.

She swings, and she misses!

Another swing and a miss!

Swing — miss.

Frustration welled up. Resolve set in. I trained my eyes on the exact spot where the ball, after it rolls down a chute, hurls out of the machine.

Finally — CRACK! And the crowd roared (in my head).

I got a few more hits in. Crack! Crack! Crack! Then I called it a game after just a few minutes. My bones and joints felt rattled, but I was absolutely elated.

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DC Bike Party is planning a ride Wednesday evening, meeting 7:30 p.m. at Dupont Circle.

Cindy Wagner, 69, of Bethesda, Maryland, sent in this pic she took on April 23.

“I was on my way to a play at the Writer’s Center … but had to stop and capture this little beauty first,” Cindy wrote in her submission.

“Though Bethesda does well flowering the median strips and big planters on the corners downtown, sometimes it's the side streets and neighborhood gardens that catch my breath.”

Calling Virginia cyclists & runners: Do you bike or run the Arlington Loop and have any photos you’ve taken recently along that trail? Share your recent photos of life along the Arlington Loop here.

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