Softball: The Role of Musical Chairs in Kinesiological Degradation

[raymond...@gmail.com]

Dear People,

 

There was a moment in the bottom of the 8th Sunday afternoon when my side was struggling to contain Chris Fure and his peeps’ ferocious late-inning 11-run rally, which had begun in the 7th just as the magnificent Joe Poppas—early for ultimate frisbee, bi-sportal to the bone, and beefy to the core—stepped into replace Greg McConell as my contingent’s moral backbone. Gregory had to leave his 3rd-base perch for some sort of obligation unrelated to softball, which, needless to say, begs the bewildering question as to what on earth could possibly be more transcendent or important than basic aerobic release?!

 

In any case, the bottom line is that with the Poppasator now holding down the fort at 3rd, our overwhelming lead was quickly cut by over half and their go-ahead run was suddenly on base in that vital 8th. To be sure, this begs the starkly blunt question as to whether Joe’s listless, uninspired and disappointing play fell into the ontological category of cause, correlation, or coincidence. I honestly don’t know, but I do know that scientific inquiry can be a deeply complex and admittedly discomforting mistress, and yet as a league whose motto has always been Truth before Sweat, we won’t shy away from those dubitations that cry out to be addressed.

 

In any case, we still had the imperturbable Bobby Fulgham on the mound in the bottom of the 8th, but the bases quickly loaded with not a single out, and given our slight two-run lead, I myself felt unusually craven, jejune, and even lily-livered. Yeah, the tension was unbearable, and needless to say, a red-beaked Himalayan snowcock brayed frantically in the distance as we looked into the abyss, girded our loins, and then stood transfixed as Bobby unleashed his legendary blend of yaw, tar, and two-fingered beytsim balls. Remarkably, what followed was three consecutive infield pop-ups, and with that, our ramparts held and big Mo’ shifted again, and thus Captain Furfeather’s posse went down, and down hard, in a spicy-hot broth of industrial failure fuels, 34-29. Tant pis.

 

It was, to be sure, a late, harsh, and mystically hidden display of what was arguably nothing more than kismet at its most capricious, and luckily for Joe, that’s something that only Chris is gonna’ have to endure in the judgmental decades to come. And therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning . . . Raymond