Softball: A Somewhat Discursive Gloss on the Issues at Hand
Dear People,
Tony Mac's team barely held off my own, 21-18, in one of those swirling cauldrons of inspirational athletic excellence that raise disturbingly insoluble questions from the richly textured canon of basic recreational ethics. More specifically, I'm fully aware that ultimate responsibility always lies with management, and yet as captain, I found myself wondering why I should be blamed for the criminally negligent behavior of my most trusted players.
For example, with two out, runners on 1st and 2nd and the score tied at 10 in the bottom of the 4th, Chris Fure seemed both poised and focused as he hurled his signature curve, knuckle and tomato balls. Suddenly, Ramona unleashed a searing line drive a full six feet down the 3rd base line, which propelled the Furinator to instantly jump into action. At this point, he could've easily thrown to any base for the final out, and yet for reasons I don't pretend to understand, this seasoned giant of the mound looked frantically to 1st, to 3rd and then to 1st again, before inexplicably hurling the ball a full 30 feet into deep left field. Curious.
A couple innings later, with the score tied at 14, one out and sneaky little ducks on the pond, Doug struck a shallow fly ball to left that Chee darted to grab with nary a step to spare! It was a catch in which the entire Malaysian nation could take justifiable satisfaction, and yet ephemeral is the pride that is subject to stark cognitive confusion. For instead of immediately throwing back that vital yellow orb, the CheezeMan decided to strike up a cheery tête-à-tête with Pace at short. From what I could tell, they seemed to be discussing the inflationary dangers of quantitative easing, but regardless, the risk of yet another runner scoring pointlessly from 3rd apparently escaped them both.
Needless to say, these two incidents accounted for the entire three-run margin of our tragic defeat, and yet as blameless as I clearly am, I still have trouble believing that either Chris or Chee are its ultimate causative agents. Indeed, I think we all know that recreational free will is a prickly, amorphous and fragile young mistress, and for both cases here, it seems that pure predeterminism is the only rational explanation for the fuck-ups in question.
Sure, it's possible that Chris just “chose” to pointlessly throw that ball away, or that Chee just “decided” to forget that base-runners themselves have their own neuro-aerobic desires, but I think we can all agree that Schopenhauer had it right when he wrote in Freedom of the Will that “Every being thinks in the moment that they can do what they choose, but their lives cannot exist 'outside' of their destinies…and so they can will that, and only that, which they will have done.” Perhaps you're not impressed, but I'd gently remind you that he wrote this in 1839, well before the wide-spread adoption of decision theory, game theory or weed.
The point is that this upcoming Monday is Labor Day, so naturally I wasn't going to organize a game. But then it suddenly occurred to me that I can do my part in wooing at least some of you away from the usual extended-weekend excursions to Yosemite and Muir Woods, where feral crab, giant Gambian rats and other worker-hating vermin await patiently to ambush you. So yeah, you can hang out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of overrated rodents, or you can look deep into your own inner-Schopenhauer, grab the bull by the necessitarian balls, and accept my once-in-a-lifetime offer to triple your normal softball salary. And therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning….Raymond
9/2/11
Softball: Proletariat
Dear People,
There will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11, and as of now, there are still four slots left.
Please bring $4 for the field, which for this week only includes a gelatinous mold of your own surplus labor value, lovingly glazed with a handcrafted post-game patina of raw human capital….Raymond 845-7552