7/1/09
Softball: When in the Course of Athletic Events. . .
Dear People,
Anthony’s team crushed my own, 25-16, and it was all the more humiliating since Ehud had just flown in from Paris after a long athletic sabbatical. Indeed, it had been many months since he had taken the mound, and thus there was a rusty Qu’est-ce-que-Je-fou-ici? in his delivery, and even worse, it was clear that several in the opposing contingent could feel his jet-lag-triggered tipsiness. Matt’s searing line drives to his tender little ankles and Debbie’s breathtaking homer into the tundra beyond left set the overall tone, though to be fair, the Huud still pitched with clarity, courage and a certain ineffectual grace.
In any case, I am well aware that this upcoming Saturday is the 4th of July, which apparently means that many of you will be celebrating an extended 10-day weekend in some hideous wildlife-infested State Park in the middle of nowhere. Never mind that the State is broke and that the snakes, ’coons and tarantulas that reside within will be more bitter and misanthropic than ever, what with their weekly rations of vermin cud cut to virtually nothing by the heartless Sacramento bureaucracy.
Of course, none of that matters to many of you, who simply “need” to get away in order to celebrate our Colonial Aerobic Heritage (our “CAH,” if you will, as in “Frank, park da cah in Harvard Yard”).
Fine, be that way. Indeed, I wasn't even going to organize a game this weekend, but then I started thinking about what the Founding Fathers would do if they were me and I were them and we were all together, goo goo ga joob. Well, I honestly don’t know, but I do know what I’ve told you in the past, and while I’m obviously not going to start quoting myself verbatim like some kind of psychotic drivel machine, I would gently remind you of what I wrote just one short year ago this week (as well as, for what it's worth, every year between ‘97 and ’08):
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As the 4th approaches, I am reminded of the intense pressures that Jefferson, Adams and Franklin must have felt when they decided to pen that most momentous of definitive divorces, their very lives at stake as cunning little fish-and-chips eating British troops scampered throughout the Pennsylvania bush. These intrepid and indefatigable revolutionaries would have no doubt given anything to play an exciting game of softball, but stuck as they were in the 18th century, they had to settle for yeoman farming and really boring arguments about the nature of mercantilism. I think you see my point. Make that commit. Do it for the children. Do it now. Indeed, the line from Alexander Hamilton to Jackie Robinson to all of you is the very essence of the American experience. . .
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The point is that you can ignore our true CAH and head off to confront a bunch of pea-brained human-hating rodentia, or you can embrace our authentic roots as an unabashedly aerobic King-George-the-3rd-hating-people. Yeah, I happen to think there’s enough of you out there who truly understand our roots, and therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning…Raymond
7/3/09
Softball: Academic Blends
Dear People,
There will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11, and as of now there are still six slots left. You are therefore welcome to commit anyone outside the community who yearns to be of us.
Please bring $4 for the field, which for this week only includes my long-awaited post-game symposium on the transformative influence of Thomas Paine and partial differential equations in modern aerobic theory. Happy 4th…Raymond 845-7552
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