4/23/14
Softball: A Hobbesian Overview of the Basic Dilemma in Athletic Competition
Dear People,
Chris Fure's team mimicked nature at its cruelest, ambushing my side as if they were nothing more than a gorgeous yet morally bankrupt pride of feral Albanyian alley cats, 14-8. Not only did Steve Bedrick's sinister blend of screw, shtup and bacon balls shut down all of our most awesome hitters, but they themselves launched a trio of blistering four-baggers that left us leeched to the very marrow of our morale-bereft bones, and I'm not saying that just because it captures our mid-game mood with an admittedly robust dollop of grammatically suspect sprachgefühl. Yeah, we were reelin', and reelin' hard.
I refer you, of course, to the bottom of the 3rd, when Ali came to the plate with one out, bases loaded and the Furinator's contingent already pounding us with a disturbing 5-1 lead. As I anxiously stood at 1st, Jerry lobbed his classic 3-knuckle slider, and the Alinator-having extensively studied its famously discursive trajectory-suddenly unleashed a searing high-arcing blast down the 3rd-base line. Jay instantly took off from his precariously shallow perch in left, but the orb sailed over his befuddled little head before catastrophically bouncing into the arboreal morass to the side of the field. It was, by any standard, a defining moment for all involved, and in many ways, a stark exemplar of the ying, the yang and the callous dialectical essence of the basic aerobic experience.
Indeed, for Ali, it was a stirring and well-deserved triumph of both focus and physics, and a truly transformative Grand Slam that she, Max and their three cherished young'uns will undoubtedly savor for decades to come. And yet for Jay (who is arguably a decent man), it will undoubtedly be a bitter and even scarring reminder of that always perilous confluence of presumption, tactical error and the unequivocal pointlessness of throwing a softball straight into the trunk of a tree as the runner's you had hoped to stop gallop merrily on their way.
To be sure, we have here yet one more example of the brutal zero-sum-game that defines competitive sport qua sport, and while it's tempting to glom on to that alluring and emotionally correct doctrine which states that a game well-played is a game of all winners, I think that we as a people are astute enough to know that when athletic glory burgeons, somewhere present is the antipodeal goat-guilty, disgraced and painfully in need of future redemption. And therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning . . . Raymond
4/25/14
Softball: Limits
Dear People,
There will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11, and as of now there are still five slots left.
Please bring $5 for the field, which for this week includes my personal pledge to you to keep this league steroid, crystal-meth and pine-tar free…Raymond 845-7552
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