6/5/02
Softball: Worried (Another Letter Against Nuclear War)
Dear People,
Congratz to all on last week’s simply sublime 13-12 10-inning won-on-the-last-hit paragon of blood-curdling athletic excellence. The mid-game arrival of two dozen deranged spectators only added searing metaphoric curry to the simmering cauldron of competitive intensity, especially as my team faced its own bottom-of-the-10th mortality with two outs, bases loaded and a conceptually fragile 12-12 lead. In all candor, I found myself standing in awe as Ehud calmly contemplated the most momentous pitch in the history of his long, storied and objectively pointless life.
As both captain and fellow-infielder, I don’t pretend to understand the tacit and tender articulation that kindles so majestically between the fear-laden oculi of a pitcher-under-stress and his eternally loyal first baseman. Still, I do know that as I looked to the Huudmeister’s wobbly frame in the seconds before that fateful last throw, our eyes suddenly met and time itself froze, and yet because of the shrieking fans and the nearly unbearable tension, my mind suddenly wondered to other zones of potential calamity and yuckitude.
I will now state what I know with certainty: As Ehud stared back at me for that last ephemeral second, I sent him a disheartened extra-sensory missive in which I contemplated the Kashmiri dilemma, insisting that "there are no innocents, and thus while the cross-border terrorism of the fundamentalists is despicable, I fear that it has found sophistic pretext in the obstructionist Indian rejection of local self-determination." Apparently though, the Huud misperceived the basic thrust of my message, curiously concluding that I had somehow said "throw a good soft arcing pitch that Frank can’t possibly miss, you know, just to see what happens." Of course that’s not at all what I implied, winked or even thought, and thus to the extent that these things matter, my team’s loss in the seconds that followed was not a function of athletic ineptitude, but rather the semiotic curse of corneal miscalculation. And that, dear friends, suggests pertinent lessons for me, our beloved softball community, and all the bozos of South-Central Asia.
_________
In any case, I would like to announce that because Emily and Jamie will soon be regrettably moving back East, the moratorium on adding players is being temporarily lifted, so long as the new recruits do not have a penis. Call me a self-hating testostaphobe if you must, but I happen to think recreational gender-balance is a value worth preserving, and for that I make no apologies. And therefore, there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning….Ray
6/7/02
Softball: Space, Punctuality and Shame
Dear People,
There will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11AM, and as of now, there are still SIX slots left. Thus, for this week, you are once again welcome to commit non-community friends, acquaintances and embittered ex-lovers, whether or not they belong to the peniled gender.
Plese bring $2 for the field, and also be aware that it is reserved by others at 1:00. This means that you should arrive at the park no later than 10:58, lest your endangerment of the 9-inning process expose you to ruthless scorn by the national press….Raymond 845-7552
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