Softball: A Mellow Portraiture of Transition and Renewal

[raymond...@gmail.com]

Dear People,

 

First things first: After a brief but impassioned round of pre-game debate, sassy ad hominem attacks, and a clearly ubiquitous feeling that democracy is a plausibly acceptable but still nutso form of governance, this community voted to:

 

1-Maintain our recently enacted Mandatory-Walk-on-Four-Balls rule. 

 

And:

 

2-Revert back to our old Mercy Rule, with any team leading by 10 or more runs at the half-inning now getting only two outs, not three.

 

Needless to say, many will take deep satisfaction in the overall results while others amongst you will undoubtedly try to form a secessionist rump league in the fraught years to come. That’s fair, but as you deviously plot away while rubbing your sinister little palms together, please don’t forget to be kindly, decent, and chill.  

 

In any case, the game that followed was superb on multiple levels, including because it was our first one back at our gorgeous Codornices homeland in almost four months. Even better, three of our finest long-gone superstars—Romeo, Pace, and Stefano—returned to play after absences of nearly a year, and all were in totally fine fettle. The Stefster was particularly impressive given that his ghastly wrist injury had threatened the end of his storied career (in softball, but not law, as far as I know), and yet there he was, magnificent at 2nd, hitting with power and élan, and, quite simply, functioning as the moral backbone of my entire team as we took on Chris ‘Epic’ Fure’s contingent with every fiber of our being.

 

Even better again, Donna was also on our side, and she dominated at the plate with multiple line drives and a blistering 5th-inning 2-RBI double to deep center-left that sailed just past Chris himself, whose captainship began to crack under the ceaseless strain of increasingly skeptical scrutiny. Indeed, Paul Horsepool and Matt Gober were both tagged out in a single tragic play the very next inning, and if that wasn’t a clear sign of cataclysmically leaderless drift, then I don’t know what. 

 

No, amigos mios, there are no real losers when all are steeped whole in the welcoming majesty of Codornician space-time, though ‘technically,’ I suppose, Captain Furfailures peeps went down 23-17, and no amount of emotively correct drivel can cleave that reality from the judgement of history’s eternally harsh eyeballs. And therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning . . . Raymond