Softball: The Second Decade
Dear People,
Sincere thanks to all who attended last week’s fantabulous 10th anniversary double header and barbeque, especially Mikie and Jen, who flew all the way from Kentucky. As you know, unaffiliated email-organized softball leagues are both bitterly despised and legally banned throughout that disturbing state, and thus when they played here with spine-tingling passion in plain view of the national media and then returned to Louisville the very next day, they took great risks with both their emotional and personal safety.
Of course it’s that kind of brazen defiance that made Jen the moral backbone of our community from 1997 until 2002. And sure enough, despite having recently bore Mikie two gorgeous little suckling units, she was still, five long years later, the dominant reason that my team crushed Frank’s in the first game of the day, 25-16. Indeed, she singled at least once, scored at least once, and finally, as the entire community erupted in joy, actually caught a medium-high fly ball to deep shallow right! Oh sure, half the bed-ridden patients of any given hospital in the country could have snagged it while drunk, but if we’ve learned anything these last 10 years, it’s that nothing is as deeply satisfying as beating restrained expectations.
In any case, the second game of the day was a somewhat less nuanced encounter, with Jonny’s team beating my own, 10-1. Now look, I’m obviously not “proud” of the fact that on this special day, we actually managed to score fewer runs than any other team in the 450-game history of this league. Still, I happen to think that a record is a record, and thus to every player on both teams, I say mazel tov!
Of course Bill Nickel’s performance at the mound was a true privilege to watch. He sensed early on that my post-barbie contingent was both beer-sotted and sausage-bloated, and thus he tossed his usual blend of curve, knuckle and spit balls with frightening aplomb and confidence. I threw every power hitter we had at him, including Matt, Ken, Darryl, Frank, Alan Miller, Chris Fure and Nanci (moral backbone #2), and yet in the end, Bill gave up only one run in the 1st before pitching a flawless shutout for the next eight innings!
For the record, the Nickelator is a true mensch, an accomplished musician, the most wildly adored Professor of Russian Literature at UC Santa Cruz AND the world’s greatest authority on Dostoyevsky and his tormented 19th century ilk. And yet in this cynical age in which we just don’t believe there are any true Renaissance men left, there he was, not reading or writing or translating, but PITCHING eight perfect innings! Yeah, I think we all understand why ten years on, we’re still the finest unaffiliated email-organized softball league West of the Sacramento River. And therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11AM, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning…Ray
PS: A special thanks to Chee for the group photo, Ramona for the personal sportswear, Kim for filming it all (stay tuned), and finally, Jennifer, Ehud and Josh for the wonderful community t-shirts! For those who didn’t get one, the finest Vietnamese cottons are covered with a generous variety of strangely familiar drivel. It was a delightful gift, and it would have been a TOTAL surprise to me, but for the fact that Ehud, for reasons I don’t pretend to understand, included me in last month’s “shhhh…Ray's league commemorative T-shirt” email. Curious…
PPS: “Ken.” Yeah, it’s an inside joke, so deal with it.
PPPS: The first photos of the day’s events are attached, courtesy of The New York Times. Or Jonny. Can’t remember.
6/13/07
Softball: Dads
Dear People,
There will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11AM, and as of now it is full. As always, please let me know asap if you committed and need to cancel, and for those who tarried, feel free to contact me later in search of reopened slots.
This week’s field fee is just $3, and in honor of Father’s Day, that includes a complimentary one year subscription to The UCLA Journal of Modern Sperm and Semen…Ray 845-7552