10/1/03
Softball: Missives Through the Ages
Dear People,
Let me admit right at the get-go that as my team began its final glorious rally with two outs and bases empty in the bottom of the 9th, the 15-11 deficit that we faced seemed like such a gaping pit of boundless despair that I had already accepted our imminent defeat, when we suddenly knocked out two bone-chillin’ singles, putting me at the plate, and Don on deck. Hope was reborn, and given that he was now the game-tying run and our league’s greatest slugger, you can well imagine that I took my final opportunity at bat with the laser-like focus of a famished Tunisian viper snake about to pounce on its pitiful and unsuspecting prey (perhaps a clueless household tabby cat).
In retrospect, of course, there was something a bit anti-climactic in popping up to 3rd on Frank’s very first pitch, but let’s remember that just two minutes earlier, we had all assumed that it was already over. So it’s not like I was the goat-dufus of the game, and even if you could make that argument, I think Don’s threat to kick my "rally-killing ass" was just way out of line. The fact is that our cause had always been preordained for failure--- a giant Calvinistic tease that no amount of aerobic competence could have ever prevented. So no, I’m not ashamed.
In any case, and as some of you may know, I sometimes like to ponder things that are a tad abstract and not entirely practical. So, for example, after completing the first sentence of this very letter just minutes ago, I found myself wondering whether America’s great founding fathers, born a full century before baseball took root, would understand what I was trying to say if they happened to come across such words in, say, a weirdo 1784 edition of Poor Richard’s Almanac. Indeed, I can picture little Benny Franklin himself sipping a fresh Philly expresso, his ceaselessly churning thoughts on the inherent flaws of the Articles of Confederation, when he suddenly finds himself reading the following:
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Let me admit right at the get-go that as my team began its final glorious rally with two outs and bases empty in the bottom of the 9th, the 15-11 deficit that we faced seemed like such a gaping pit of boundless despair that I had already accepted our imminent defeat, when we suddenly knocked out two bone-chillin’ singles, putting me at the plate, and Don on deck.
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Oh sure, he’d probably be aghast at the teenage slang of the day, particularly with its lurid references to promiscuous bone-chillin’ single chicks who want to get it on with Don, but my gut tells me that he’d understand the broad essence of this essay, with its occasionally oblique but essentially clarion analysis of the continuing British threat to inter-colonial shipping. So yes, language constantly evolves with history itself, but I have no doubt that the really sagacious stars like Franklin, Jefferson and Kermit would make the seamless semantic jump from their own century to ours, and in so doing, prove once again that our great American tongue licks eagerly from the timeless and salty shoals of inter-generational cohesion. And therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning….Raymond
10/3/03
Softball: Blunt
Dear People,
There will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11:00, but as of now, there are still eight slots left. Fortunately for you, I don’t have time to send out a beg letter, but if I don’t get some more commits from either some dilatory regulars or the sundry cast of sardonic ex-lovers, tutors and bookies that form the intimate milieu of your non-aerobic lives, I will be forced to make a humiliating round of Sunday morning calls. So stop dicking around and find me some more players. Cordially yours…Raymond 845-7552
PS: $2 for the field, meds and leadership.
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