11/27/02:
Softball: Musings on Freedom and Fowl
Dear People,
Congratz to all on last week’s boisterous 25-16 exploration into our community’s inimitable institutional resilience. I must confess that several very late arrivals, a total no-show, a last-second cancel and the presence of so many new and cherubic faces eager to boot them all made for a daunting organizational challenge. And yet with all due modesty, the hastily reconfigured teams showed such a sublime and linear balance within the living recreational canvas that I still wonder if my own side’s "loss" was merely an aerobic illusion of sicko Escheresque dimensions. I honestly don’t know.
In any case, some of you are probably aware that tomorrow is the 381st anniversary of America’s first thanksgiving dinner, a bountiful New World feast in which a hearty group of disheveled English Pilgrims and their Wampanoag Indian hosts laid the foundations for the next four centuries of superb and symbiotic intercultural relations. This is all fine and good, but what you may not know is that these original Brits were not in fact Puritans (who came almost a decade later, in 1629), but rather Separatists, who had set sail on the Mayflower in order to seek true religious and athletic autonomy---specifically by ditching those God-fearing losers who had stuck with the corrupted Church of England.
It’s now 381 years on, and some of you may be thinking that in the context of this uniquely American holiday, it’s OK to forget about softball. Ultimately, that’s your choice, although in all candor, I’m not really sure why anyone would want to travel several thousand miles in order to spend a stressed-out weekend with a distant clique of loons, rogue-kin and other familial psychotics. Regardless, the point is that when the Separatists arrived in Plymouth or Vegas or wherever they were in that momentous Fall of 1620, they found themselves an ocean away from the despicable House of Stuart, with its arbitrary decrees against the playing of every cherished sport from Scottish Croquet to Topless Rugby. In New England, of course, such royal dictates carried no weight, and thus just 25 decades later, baseball sprung forth from the rich loam of American liberty. Yeah, history is not always cohesive, but it does emit stark lessons for those who care to see them, and therefore, there will be a game at Codorncies this Sunday at 11AM, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning…..Raymond
11/27/02
Softball: Another Week not to Dawdle
Dear People,
There will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11AM, but as of now, it is completely FULL. As in no slots, all doors locked, 25 dogs, 22 bones, and so on. As always, feel free to check for late cancels, or if desperate, you may address a brief but hopefully cogent plea to the community as a whole, beginning with the following initial sentence: "Look , I know that technically I'm the 38th commit, but there really should be an exception for me because…" Good luck.
Please bring $2 for the field, which for this week only includes a pre-game holiday stein of semi-curdled Estonian buttermilk, cautiously flavored with just a patina of either soy, vanilla or goat….Raymond 845-7552
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