3/1/00

Softball: Athletics and Logic

Dear People,

Congratz to those eight valiant souls who engaged in last Sunday’s enervating 70-42 paragon of deliciously filthy touch football, steeped as it was in the drenched clay muds of the Codornices outback. I must confess that at first I was a bit chagrined by the severity of my own quartet’s apparent failure of aerobic resolve, but in looking back on the game’s true progression, I now realize that the score itself is a shocking display of ontological deception!

Indeed, had this match been softball, "touchdowns" would have been translated into more athletically justifiable "points," thus producing a final sore of just 10-6. And while I am not an abstract trigonomitrist by either temperament or trade, I am utterly convinced that 10-6 is equal to 5-3. Now, when one adds in the fact that the opposing team was led by a 16 year old whipper-snapper who was less than half the age of every other player on that field, I think you’d agree that the only way to honorably address the discomforting issue of geriatric load would be to spot my own contingent a couple of stamina-balancing concession points. Throw in the fact that I didn’t have my cleats, and you quickly realize that, no, we did not lose 70-42, but by every possible ethical accounting, actually won 6-5. And given how much I was panting, I’d say that feels pretty damn awesome.

*******

Unfortunately, the magnificent soils of Codornices are going to be increasingly difficult to reserve over the next few weeks, and alas, I just found out that Kleeberger is also taken for most weekends in March. Yet as has been our custom over these last three years, we will simply wander again, adamant as a people that the pernicious cabal of insensate city bureaucrats and despicably pampered prepubescent soccer leagues do not prevent us from engaging in the only recreational solace of our essentially pointless lives. Therefore, there will be a game this Sunday at 3PM, at beautiful San Pablo Park (in the lovely West Berkeley flatlands), IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning…..Raymond