9/19/12
Softball: Grove (A Sudden Crisis of the Land this way Comes)
Dear People,
Despite the fact that over half of Jim McGuire's team was injured, gimpy or just outright drained from life's rich pageant, they played with a certain clarity of resolve that I've rarely seen in email-organized sport. Of course sensitivity in narrative spin gets you only so far, and thus while they did indeed rally late, hard and proud in order to put the winning run at the plate with bases loaded and two out in the bottom of the 9th (!), they still went down in heartbreaking flames, 19-16.
For the record, I'd like to point out that it was only after my side jumped out to an 11-2 lead in the 5th that I suddenly realized that a majority of the Jimster's contingent should've been back at home, nursing their pitifully aging bones in a soothing vat of hot milk and Epsom salts. Yet by this time it was too late to tweak the team rosters, and that is why I chose to make the honorably brazen decision of straying far from the comfort zone of my cherished 1st-base perch in order to take up my side's ramparts at short. Yeah, short, as in shortstop.
Now, it's true that by the time the carnage of this inning was over, Jim's team had suddenly scored 10 runs on five hits and 92 errors, yet I myself actually played with a breathtaking lack of ineptitude! This would suggest that as soon as I began my noble experiment in those wormy clay soils between 2nd and 3rd, a curiously ethereal wave of dread-laden anxiety swept across the field, thereby leaving the rest of my team feckless, nauseous and clearly confuddled. Of course that wasn't my fault, and while I fortunately returned to 1st as soon as the grand contours of this particular game's imbalance had been ethically righted, I simply can't guarantee that I won't partake anew in this admittedly perilous affront to the allocative fundaments of basic athletic sanity.
Having said that, we as a community got much bigger problems. I've been able to verify that the Berkeley Boys Lacrosse League that was occupying our homeland when we arrived last week had not in fact reserved it, which of course explains why their leader had 'forgotten' their reservation. Unfortunately, though, the City of Berkeley-in its infinite appreciation for the $40,000 in field fees that I've personally given them over these last 15 years-has just let me know that said Lacrosse-playing punks have been given the field this upcoming week from 8AM to noon! (I shit you not; I got the call just a few minutes ago, as I was sitting down to woo you all).
This means that Codornices has now been technically double booked since I've already paid for our reservation for this upcoming week. However, because I'm playing a diplomatically delicate long game with certain officials within the Department of Parks and Wreck, I've decided to help extricate said bureaucrats from the organizational quagmire that they alone created. Frankly, I've decided to do this in part because this Sunday morning was already going to be chaotic back at Codornices, where a few thousand touchy-feely nutjobs are due to arrive for the 75th anniversary of the Berkeley Rose Garden, directly across the street. Moreover, the Berkeley-Albany Girls Softball League is also scheduled to seize Codornices for three Sundays over the next several weeks, as they are inexplicably allowed to do every single Fall. In brief, the season of our forced recreational Diaspora has now arrived-early, brutal and utterly annoying.
To be sure, I imagine that a lot of you are now wondering if we can actually survive this vicious cabal of softball-dissing functionaries, presumptuous pre-pubescent pseudo-athletic fascists and burnt-out flower-fetished hippies that have conspired to crush us as a people. Maybe, maybe not. Yet deep in my bosom, I also know that like the ancient Hebrews before us, we owe it to our precious great great grandkids to at least go out and try, if for no other reason than they're so conceptually abstract. And therefore there will be a game this Sunday at 11AM at magnificent GROVE PARK (at MLK and Russell), IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning….Raymond
9/21/12
Softball: Social Mobility
Dear People,
There will be a game at GROVE PARK this Sunday at 11AM (at MLK and Russell), and as of now there are still five slots left.
Please bring $4 for this splendidly OK backup field, which, just to be clear, I fully realize is a brutal confiscatory drag if you're stuck in the 47% and would really like to save what you can so that you can sneak into the 1%. Regardless, good luck with that. . .Raymond 845-7552
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