4/20/10
Softball: Ponderings on the Recreational Meaning of Easter
Dear People,
In 12 long and grueling innings of exquisitely competitive pulchritude, my side crushed Pace's on the final hit of the game, 12-11. It was one of those rarefied eight-hour matches that made me feel as if the very act of aerobic exertion was serving as a magical ontological bridge between the physical athletic corpus (“the body”), and what Descartes called the communal soul (“the communal soul”). Descartes was a moron, of course, but I think that at least he would've lasted all dozen innings, which is more than I can say for many of us.
Indeed, several players dropped out after the 10th, from either conflicting engagements, sheer physical exhaustion or simple attitudinal failure (“Dude, my pineal gland is sore-I'm outta here”). Yet for those of us who held out until Dave Snyder's searing coup de grace up the middle finally ended the match, there was the rich spiritual satisfaction of knowing that we had undoubtedly pleased the Lord.
I mention this because it just so happens that this upcoming Sunday is the 1,979th anniversary of the resurrection of the incomparable Jesus Christ, give or take a decade and a really impressive leap of hearty Christian faith. So naturally I was thinking that I wouldn't bother to organize a game this week so that we could all partake in the annual Livermore Eucharist and Weenie Roast, but then it suddenly occurred to me that I don't even know what a weenie is!
Regardless, the more I thought about it, the more I started to think that bailing on our game is something that Jesus himself would not condone, and while I'm obviously not going to quote myself verbatim, I would gently remind you of what I wrote just 12 short years ago (and have shamelessly reposted every other year since), in that innocent Clintonian Spring of April '99….
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I for one am not about to schedule a game that would conflict with the more spiritual foci of our people of faith. Nevertheless, I just happened to be reading through the Gospel according to Matthew when it suddenly struck me that the Mattmesiter's most compelling contribution was probably his stirring depiction of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
In all candor, I am not an expert in the ancient Hebraic tongues of the Eastern Mediterranean, and yet my own etymological analysis strongly suggests that the Aramaic slang word “mooundt” (meaning literally, “awesome anthill”) was somehow translated into ancient Hebrew as their word for “mount,” (meaning “nice mountain”), when in reality, the location where Jesus offered his beatitudes was on the “mound” (with a 'd').
No, I cannot prove this beyond a doubt, and I certainly do not mean to cast aspersions on the fine folks who toiled at the Department of Translation in King James' Court. Yet I am suggesting that recent archeological breakthroughs now clearly imply that the ancient Israelites played a club-swinging ball game that was shockingly similar to our modern game of baseball, and more to the point, when Jesus rose to address the multitudes on that fateful ancient day, he did so from the pitcher's mound at the original Jerusalem Stadium and Rugby Club.
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The point is that it's a dozen years later, and while Donald Chump's recent groundbreaking investigations have now clearly revealed that our very own President was born in either Nairobi or Neptune, I take a certain pride in the fact that over a decade of meticulous biblical scholarship has left my own theories as the universally accepted paradigm of basic athletic theology. Yeah, there's a certain grace in truth itself, and therefore there will be a game at Grove Park this Sunday at 4, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning…. Raymond
4/22/11
Softball: A Range of Paschal Lagniappes
Dear People,
There will be a game at Grove Park this Sunday at 4PM, and as of now there are still four slots left.
Please bring $4 for the field, which for this week only includes either a succulent post-match Easter ham (lovingly served with bacon garnish and pork ribs) or a brief but intensive seminar on the teaching of early-modern Slovenian as a foreign tongue…Raymond 845-7552
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