3/12/14

Softball: Physics (The Exculpatory yet Disconcerting Nature of Recreational Reality)

Dear People,

Chris Fure's team barely staved off my own, 13-12, in one of those truly majestic paragons of the inherent volatility of our quantum athletic trajectories, and if you were there, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The fact is that the Furinator's side came out swinging (it is, after all, softball), and before the end of the first half, they'd racked up six runs on nine hits with a merciless series of blasts to deep right field. Maria initially struggled mightily to blunt their laser-like thuggery, but in the innings that followed, she shut them down with a rarefied blend of deeper focus, robust motion and a brazen tactical gambit in which she screamed at Jim to move his elastic ass over from his center-right perch. Thankfully, it worked.

Indeed, over the next eight innings we steadily bounced back, and thus by the bottom of the 9th, the Mariameister found herself batting with two on, two out and our side down by a puny little run! To be sure, she had grown into the moral backbone of our entire contingent, and after facing down Steve Bedrick-with his treacherous multi-seam changeups-she loaded the bases on one of the most thrilling walks in the history of this league. Yeah, I could breath easier, because the winning run was at 2nd and Jay was now at the plate!

Curiously, I had failed to notice that the J man's dominating play in the early innings had actually begun to falter, and in fact just one inning earlier, his 4th multi-base hit of the day had tragically imploded when he overran 3rd by a scant six and half feet (thereby destroying our only go-ahead rally on an unsightly piss-ant tag-out). Perhaps even more ominous, Cool Jayz' flawless execution in left had come to an inauspicious end in the top of the 9th, when Donny's 2-out line out was tragically transformed into a dispositive 3-RBI homer after ricocheting off the Jayster's left forearm and into the dank wooded tundra abutting.

Now, in fairness, perhaps I shouldn't have been so shocked when our hero's game-winning 2-RBI single was apparently played out in some kind of stringy alternate universe, but regardless, the only thing I saw was the most jejune and anti-climactic game-ending ground-out to 2nd that I believe I've ever witnessed. And so obviously I couldn't help thinking of that totally tear-jerking scene in Titanic when Rose looks back on her life and tells us that Jack had saved her, and indeed, had saved her “in every way that a girl can be saved” (from that bastard Cal, from her own naiveté, and of course, from those icy cold waters).

I guess the point is that life's rich cyclic journey will always bounce between the yin and the yang, and in the end, I think we can all agree that Jay drowned us as a team, and indeed, drowned us in every way that a team can be drowned (by his lack of Newtonian judgment, by his dubious visual acuity, and of course, by the icy cold waters of our expectations denied). Yet this is hardly to say that our loss was his 'fault,' for I think I know enough about the inherent epistemological weirdness of causality to gently suggest that Jay himself was likely nothing more than a victim of spooky action at a distance-and just for the record, I'm referring here to the implications of the uncertainty principle, and not simply watching Sarah Palin and Donald Trump at this year's CPAC.

So yeah, we all have a lot to contemplate, because the nature of reality as I understand it is that what happened to Jay could happen to any of us. And yet I also happen to know that there isn't a player among you who wouldn't seize the peril-laden bull by the balls-knowing full well that the joy of playing this most glorious of all aerobic endeavors is certainly worth the slight but real risk of becoming a hircine calamity personified. And therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning . . . Raymond



3/14/13

Softball: Accomplished

Dear People,

There will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11, and as of now there is still one slot left.

Please bring $5 for the field, which for this week only includes your well deserved Honorary Doctorate from Princeton in the Social Construction of Semiotic Quantum Consciousness . . . Raymond

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