you are playing softball with the guy leading High Holiday services."

Like the Delaware Valley league, the games run by the seven-team JCC Kaiserman Branch League feature modified fast pitch, which allows the pitcher to throw as fast as he can without utilizing the windmill technique favored by collegiate and Olympic hurlers.

Lori Hummel, assistant physical education director at Kaiserman, who for the past 18 years has organized the spring/summer softball league there, said these particular games are far from laid back.

"This is competitive, this isn't joke-around time. These guys want to win," said Hummel. "A lot of people that play softball, it stops being recreation and it becomes a fight."

Of course, the lines between friendly game and fierce competition are often blurred. Sometimes, in the heat of things, playerstry things they might think better of later.

With the Har Zion game still close in the fourth inning, the team's Larry Rosen exuded a sense of competitive fire. With a fly ball rolling into the outfield, the third-base coach waved Rosen home.

Sensing a throw to the plate, the ballplayer feared it would be close. But he couldn't slide because he was wearing shorts. So he ran as hard as he could, crossing the plate safely as the ball bounced in the dirt.

He couldn't slow himself, though, and crashed into the backdrop fence.

Moments later, he rested on a nearby bench while his 10-year-old daughter, Inde, cleaned the dirt from his knee and inspected his scrapes. He lifted his head toward the sky, then let out a sigh, followed by