Who knew there’s a lot to know about adult-league softball?

This past week, the Poarch Creek Indians held the 2017 Native American Sports Association (NASA) Softball Tournament.

Fifty-eight teams from around the country converged in Poarch for the annual competition that’s held at different places each year. Men and women, young and old, competed in the tournament.

As I was walking around taking pictures of any of the local teams playing, if I was confused about something, I’d ask a player or coach about the issue.

One of the biggest things that I learned is that there is an art to pitching in the adult softball league. The league utilizes a slow-pitch format. The pitcher literally has to throw the ball under handed to the batter.

Now, there’s so much about pitching that I don’t know, but this takes the cake.

A player, Bryan Gregson, of the Sneaky Creek men’s and women’s division team, explained that there are different things pitchers can do to the ball, like twisting the ball as it’s released and that as a batter, the ball can do things us spectators can’t see.

Additionally, the ball’s flight path can’t go below 3 feet and above 10 feet.

Who knew?

There are several other things that I picked up and they include that there are two strikes and then a batter is out, and if a batter gets three balls on a count, then he or she is walked.

There is a home run rule, too.

Because these are adults playing softball, the limit is three homeruns per game. Any more than that is an out.

With every new rule that I learned about, the more I respected the game.

If you hadn’t noticed, I had a lot of fun at the NASA tournament last week. Although tired from a very hard week at work, it did provide some reality relief.

I am thankful that I got two things out of the tournament — knowledge and relief.