Softball: The Varied Phylos of Pain within the Human Condition
Dear People,
In a vital high-drama game that featured a record four community debutantes, Chris Fure's team established a crushing double-digit lead over my own, but in the end, they only held on by the patina of their enamel-coated molars, 24-23.* The Furinator's contingent was in fact coasting on a dominant blend of pitching, hitting and managerial sassitude when Jerry smashed a two-out 7th-inning Allan Brill slurve ball right back up the middle (Yeah, a slurve ball-Google it). Alas, the bulleting orb toppled Allan as if he were nothing more than the 6-pin in Lane 23 of the Albany Bowl, and even worse, he only broke his fall by breaking his wrist ;-(
Allan, may you heal with the speed of that nasty little orb….
In any case, Chris took over their hurling duties with initial focus and aplomb, and yet in what can only be called an unmitigated failure of crisis management, he promptly blew their 11-run cushion. I was grateful for the fact that our hitters were now pounding away at his meatballs with ceaseless multi-base ferocity, but truth be told, I also felt a certain vicarious forlornment for the BrilloPad as he sat there on the bleachers, nursing his freshly-iced wound. Indeed, as he observed his 7-inning masterpiece dissolve into statistical dust, I couldn't help musing over the power of black swans, the violently fickle nature of athletic zeitgeist, and of course, whether Chris would ever have the fortitude of ego to one day pitch again. I honestly don't know.
However, what I do know with virtual certainty is that after extensive forensic analysis, I can now report that my team did in fact end up losing despite it all, but the final score was 24-23, and not actually 24-23*, and certainly not 30-23, as some may have thought given all the brouhaha that erupted in the bottom of the 8th (which in fact was the bottom of the 7th-I shit you not). If you will, allow me to explicate:
When my team pulled within what I and several others had mentally calculated as a one-run game (20-19), Chris blandly announced that there had been a mistake in the 8th-inning cumulative score slot, and that when all the tally lines were added up from the individual inning boxes, their lead was in fact seven daunting runs (26-19). Needless to say, as one who's always felt that our games should be scored in compliance with the rules of Major League Baseball and not Greco-Roman Wresting, I was initially perplexed by the somewhat engorged magnitude of the apparent error in question.
Fortunately, both Chris and I later concluded that someone had marked down their six 7th-inning runs in the 8th-inning box, realized their mistake and added the runs to the 7th-inning box, but then, in a fateful gaffe of chaos-provoking consequence, forgot to strike out those six mistaken runs! This would explain the discrepancy between the total individual runs marked across the inning boxes (26), and the correctly and fairly noted cumulative score (20), which, for what it's worth, also clearly shows that this game-stopping kerfuffle was in fact committed by one whose intent was as innocent and righteous as pure virgin myrrh.
In fact, there was bedlam and mishap throughout the whole match, but in the end, Jerry (the frightful slugger), Chris (the tragic captain-reliever) and Anonymous (the curiously befuddled scorekeeper) clearly committed no ethical transgressions. Rather, their angst, shame and confusion are merely the potent emotive prism through which we as a community can see them as the trio that they really are-Yes, towering and inspirational symbols of the ghastly divergence between purity of heart and calamity of result. And therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11AM, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning….Raymond
5/25/12
Softball: Cultured
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 $4 for the field, which for this week only includes my personal pre-match rendition of Vivaldi's Concerto for Two Violins in A Minor and C++…Raymond 845-7552