Softball: Turkish (Complexities in the Vast American Landscape)
Dear People,
Maya's blistering two-out 9th-inning RBI to center was the last hit of the first game that we as a recreational folk have ever played at Cal's suggestively petite Levine-Frick Softball Field, and thanks to this final glorious blast, my team snuffed out Corey's, 20-19. That we were able to pull this off despite three morale-crushing over-the-fence homer-denied-outs shows the ceaseless perseverance of our multi-inning rally, but more then just that, it also reflects the Frickster's legendary regulatory status as a stadium where our community's most lethal power-hitters are actually better off if they show up to play while totally plastered on weed (that's not athletic or legal advice, but just an honest observation-pert, medicinal and sage).
In any case, the bittersweet reality is that Corey inspired his team with clarity and distinction, and as a captain who went six for six at the plate, no one can deny that his performance was the very essence of leadership-by-example. And yet, let's be real; This was his last chance to taste the sweet nectar of victory before heading off with Traci and their cherished schnauzer Tony, on the long and arduous drive to their totally new life in corny Ames, Iowa.
Alas though, our tragic hero will have to endure the raw acrid taste of his calamitous defeat, and so I imagine their vehicular soundtrack will be Springsteen's Nebraska, with its stark and windswept vistas of life on the post-game edge. Still, every fiber of my geo-intuitive being says that somewhere on that interstate between Albuquerque, New Mexico and Wichita Kansas, his psychic pain will lift, and lift high, and he will once again see the long and remaining road ahead as a transcendent salve in itself-Asphalt, to be sure, but also a towering Kerouacesque symbol of the future unwritten.
In any case, I wasn't even going to organize a game this upcoming weekend due to the bitter land dispute I suddenly find myself engaged in with the Department of Parks and Wreck, and, in keeping with that general territorial theme, the fact that tomorrow happens to be the 394th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving Dinner; Yeah, that bountiful New World feast in which a hearty group of disheveled English settlers and their Wampanoag Indian hosts laid the foundations for the next four centuries of superb and symbiotic intercultural relations. But then I started to think about what I had written all of you in November 2000 on this very day, and while I'm obviously not going to quote myself verbatim, I think you'd agree that given our current travails with the city, the following passage has particular resonance . . .
Few seem to remember that this time-honored tradition of combining hearty fowl-based meals with vigorous exercise became firmly established only after Captain Miles Standish and Squanto rose to toast their good fortune on that frosty Plymouth evening in November 1621. Both men agreed to a post-dinner match of exhilarating AAA Pilgrim Ball-a curious colonial pastime that most recreational historians now believe was an embryonic version of soccer although it was actually played with darts. Unfortunately for the Wampanoag, though, their team lost 10-8, and thus under the pre-match agreement, they and their relatives had to abandon all of New England by 1625.
The point is that it's 14 years later and we ourselves are now forced to wander, and so yes, you can certainly escape to some faraway and exotic locale to have some admittedly succulent turkey, but I would gently suggest that you'll inevitably be trapped at a table in which the joy of such succulence is more than offset by the cringe-inducing reality of your nutso extended kin. And therefore there will be one more game at Cal's tiny little awesome Levine-Frick Field this Sunday at 11, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning . . . Raymond
PS: A Summary of the Homeland Sitch:
Codornices will be closed though February as it undergoes reseeding, and for this week, all other city fields are taken. Starting next week, our beloved Grove Park backup field will also be closed for reseeding, which as policy decisions go, tends to confirm my belief that somebody in the Berkeley City bureaucracy is out to hose us as a people.
In any case, Levine-Frick will (very likely) be available for our upcoming game this Sunday, but I think we just got lucky in that the two weeks we needed her are surrounding the Thanksgiving Holiday. SO, starting a week from Sunday, on December 7th, we'll be playing at the usual time on San Pablo Field #2, through February, assuming the city keeps it promises. Stay tuned. . .
A PPS of Transformational Import!
I am delighted to report that Olga gave birth to a gorgeous baby girl a couple weeks ago, and as you can see from the attached picture below, every fiber of little Alexandra Draper's being cries out to play unaffiliated email-organized softball asap. And I for one plan to make sure that happens, when she joins Kira and Tucker's son Levi for their first game as burgeoning athletic superstars, in the Fall of '26.
A PPPS for the Soul:
Are you looking for some beautiful new art to explore (as seen in the other smiling face below)? Of course, you are, and now you can do so while staying connected to the family of the greatest Danish superstar to ever play in our league! Enjoy . . .
http://www.64faces.com/
11/28
Softball: The Hinge of Fate
Dear People,
There will hopefully be a game at Cal's Frick-Levine Softball Field (or quite possibly the huge Witter astroturf field immediately next door), and as of now, there are still three slots left.
Please note that you will need to check your email that morning around 10:30 since there's a possibility that the fields will be locked and inaccessible, and there's also a chance of significant rain both tomorrow and Sunday. In other words, this week's game faces grave existential risks from both man and nature-not coincidentally, two of my least favorite things.
Nevertheless, please assume nothing until you get the word, since if there's any reasonable way for me to make this happen, it will.
Fortitude . . . Raymond
PS: Feel like being spontaneous? Of course you do . . .
11/29/14
Softball!: SPONTANEOUS Post-Bird Pre-Storm Game, in 14 hours!! . . .
. . . at the totally awesome Frick-Levine Softball Field, IF I get 18 players by 10:45AM latest, and the field is accessible and unoccupied (and, despite having just ingested 4.7 pounds of fowl, I'm awake enough to drive out and verify all this). I already have seven commits, so, as Wendy would say, all I need is 11 more butts. Tell me by 10:30, and with a little luck, the game will be at noon!
Yes, you're feeling torpid, tipsy and tryptophaned beyond the pale of human endurance, but that's precisely why you need to make that commit, and especially before that stupid rain-laden squall off the coast threatens every outdoor activity that you've ever yearned to play.
I'm going to sleep/Talk to you by 10:50AM latest….Raymond
PS: Plenty of parking, $1 an hour . . .
http://recsports.berkeley.edu/facilities/fields/levine-fricke-field/
PPS: Just to be clear, this sudden burst of aerobic carpe diem is in addition to, and not instead of, all plans for Sunday.
11/28/14
Softball: Friday 10:50AM: The Sadness of the Sparrows ;-(
With a great ache in my recreational heart, I have to call off today's attempt at aerobic spontaneity since we are still several short of a quorum.
Pray for contiunued drought/Talk to you Sunday morning . . . Raymond
11/30/14
Softball: Sunday, 8:42 AM: Screwed ;-( . . .
Given the continual downpour as I peck and the contemptibly green-wet Doppler radar map from Eureka to Fresno, I have no choice but to cancel today's game (whether or not Fircke-Levine/Witter is unlocked). I'm going back to sleep, to dream of my sunny Santa Monica.
In any case, next week at San Pablo #2, nature willing. Patience . . . Raymond