Softball: The Knowledge Problem

[raymond...@gmail.com]

Dear People,

 

If there were ever a sport that captures the normative field of aerobic inquiry with more harrowing ambiguity than softball, I have yet to see it, and yeah, I say that in the most Kantian sense of the dilemma at hand. To wit, in last week’s game there were no fewer than three markers in which professed belief collapsed in the tragic swirl between delusion and truth, and without meaning to make you feel tremulous or even dirty, I think this presents a disturbing epistemological bummer for all of us. 

 

That’s right, before the match even began, Chris Fure and Jim McGuire pressed me hard for a tweaking of the rosters that would favor Chris’ contingent on the dubious premise that my side was somehow stronger than theirs. I actually felt that my team was slightly weaker on paper, and with Aaron’s logic and moral support, I refused to budge despite my gnawing guilt. Time would tell, of course. That’s right, time—disinterested, retrospective, and seeped deep in the long-term seed corn of inevitable planetary death. Yeah, Kant was nothing if not a buzzkill.

 

This all became clearer in the top of the 5th when Brian unleashed a riveting 2-on 2-out rocket down the third base line that would tie up the score at 12, but the orb’s long, high and yaw-laden flightpath would trigger an explosive brouhaha which exposed the stark fragility of ‘empirical truth.’ The great Burt Dragin was playing catcher at the time of the blast, and as such, he had the absolute authority to make the line call that he did, which, against team interest, was fair. That’s right, fair, as in as fair as the pristine morning dew. 

 

Perhaps not surpringly, over half his peeps erupted in loud and cantankerous protest, but our hero isn’t known as Burt ‘the human eyeball’ Dragin for nothin’. Moreover, Romeo was my base runner at 3rd with the best view on the field, and he only took off for home after seeing the ball land exactly as the Burtster had claimed. Eerie, to be sure, but the real point is that if this bitterly contested orb isn’t an irrefutable argument for the total elimination of eyewitness testimony as a supposedly acceptable form of tribunal ‘evidence,’ then I don’t know what.

 

What I do know is that Liz’s own decoupling of personal perception from the reality of imminence was clearly evident, and while her 6th-inning pickoff at the plate featured a full and painful second of rally-killing deadtime between ball and foot, it was her curious miscalculations in deep center right, and specifically of the vital interplay between orbital trajectory and glove, that proved especially costly for my side. Of course this isn’t about kinesiological failure or even ascribing blame in the abstract, for it was clearly Bobby F’s intimidating blend of curve, motility, and two-fingered syphilitic balls that largely shut down the core of my lineup, and thus, in the end, my new one-game winning streak imploded with the dignity-bereft lifespan of a common dumbass housefly, 23-15.

 

Fortunately, we were still able to feast at the delightful post-game barbie on a bountiful selection of charred meats, salubrious veggies, home-made desserts and fermented Scottish offal with head cheese and porridge. Good thing, I suppose, given the subtle yet disturbing lessons of that just completed game; specifically, that outside of pure mathematics, we just don’t know anything with certainty in the past, imminent present or future, and that’s from the origins of the universe onward. Yeah, it’s not easy being human and contemplative and confuddled, but perhaps that’s why we have no real choice but to flee the raw ubiquity of doubt with a deliciously ironic escape to softball itself. And therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11 IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning . . . Ray