4/6/11
Softball: Youth (A Shameless Appeal for Focus While Pecking Under Pain)
Dear People,
My team unexpectedly pulverized Mike Davey's, 21-12, and frankly, the whole unsightly affair reminded me of the way a friendly house cat would 'play' with a disoriented Dutch scavenger mouse if it were ever cornered in the kitchen pantry. We performed with a certain robust excellence, but ultimately, the Daveyator's defense must be held accountable, and held high and hard they will be. Truth be told, I think half of them were stoned.
Of course there are errors and then there are errors, and few are as glorious as Jeffrey Powers' 6th-inning failure to entrap a genteel and utterly playable grounder straight up the middle. Fortunately, he was able to quickly grab the ball after it inexplicably bounced off his glove, but in the 1.8 seconds that followed, his mitt-to-throwing-hand transfer was awkwardly impeded by a rekindled wave of drunken spasticity. Finally, and in a curiously ill-advised attempt to make up for lost time, good'ol Powerboy hurled the ball 15 feet above Ruth's outstretched mitt at 1st, thereby capping the finest triple-error by an individual player in the history of this league! Yeah, it was a pleasure to behold.
Unfortunately, it was perhaps the only joy I had all game, since immediately after my first trip to the plate-a respectable line drive past short-the rich, carbon-filled muscles between my left shoulder and neck suddenly took on the unhelpful texture of lovingly cured concrete. After 48 years with a cement-free body, this has now happened to me three times in three years and frankly, I don't appreciate the trend line. Of course this very community has a veritable cackle of Cal-based bioscience superstars (Ehud, Ben, Jim, Tristan, Tom, Stephanie, Paul F, Jeff W and Alan S), yet despite my earnest and incessant pleas, apparently none of them have even come close to stopping the aging process at the cellular level. With all due respect, I find this totally bogus.
The point is that my tiny little telomeres continue to unravel as I type these very words, and while I know you don't want to hear it, the fact is that without a transformative breakthrough in gerontological biophysics, most of us playing at the peak of our careers right now won't even be able to swing a bat by the middle of this century. Oh sure, with further Republican advances in the House, we'll at least get to rely on the vibrant and traditional health insurance markets that have always given octogenarians such profound peace of mind, but is that good enough?!
I'd like to think that with a little nudging, the towering scientist-athletes amongst us will realize that while proteins, fungi, snakes and so on are awesome fields of inquiry, none of it will matter in 100 years if we can't play softball because of something stupid-like we're dead. I think we all get this, and therefore there will be a game at Grove Park this Sunday at 4PM, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning…Ray
4/8/11
Softball: Browsing in the Bio Library
Dear People,
There will be a game at Grove Park this Sunday at 4PM, and as of now, there are still three slots left.
Please bring $4 for the field, which for this week only includes a complimentary tube of Horsie brand organic paste wormer, for all your equine needs… Raymond 845-7552
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