Softball: Variations on an Annual Fave
raymond...@gmail.com
Dear People,
Let the record show that on an unusually toasty and humid East Bay day, my team took on Eoin’s in a truly groundbreaking battle royale, because for the first time in the history of this league, the moral backbone of each contingent was a towering superstar whose newly implanted titanium hip melded the stirring advances of material science with the more prosaic traditions of the carbon-based experience. That’s right, my own peeps had the fantabulous Greg “Steely Bones” McConnell at 3rd, and Eoin’s side had the dazzling Mark “Magic Metal” Laber at 1st, and between the two of them, I can tell ya that the rosters had never felt so cohesive, so balanced, and so bionically sublime.
Still, neither lad did much of anything that I can remember, but in fairness, that’s beside the point. They were the subtle inspirational glue for their respective contingents, and as such, it was likely Metal Boy deserves a lot of the credit for the Eoinator himself going on a jaw-dropping streak of four multi-base RBI blasts to the sloped yak-laden tundra beyond deep sharp left. Of course with the sweet comes the sour, and the hard reality is that Eoin may be both Irish and frightfully dominant, but he still had a surprisingly sievesh day at short. Sure, the coinage is mine and dubious at best, but regardless, I think we can all agree that this put Mark face to face with that classic Gaelic saw, Nuair a spreagann tú, glacann tú an chreidiúint as an nglóir, agus as an ae searbh freisin (“When you inspire, you take credit for the glory, and the rancid liver too”).
Luckily Greg had no such issues as the inspirational spine on my side, for we all played with ceaseless focus (sort of), and no one more so than the venerable Burt Dragin, whose jaw-dropping 5 for 6 at the plate made him the only octogenarian in the history of this league to have batted over .800! Indeed, I hope just to be lucid and alive when I’m over 80, if for no other reason than to relish anew the grandeur of our 31-26 triumph—satisfying, meritorious, and exceedingly drenched in nglóir.
The point is that this upcoming Sunday is the 1,993rd anniversary of the resurrection of the inimitable Jesus Christ, give or take a decade and a somewhat robust leap of faith, and so naturally I wasn’t going to bother organizing a game. But then I started thinking about the fact that these are emotionally draining times, and like the Christmeister himself in the land of Roman Judea, we also find ourselves in a land governed by an insufferable cackle of vile dickwads (though thankfully, they generally don’t wear togas). Needless to say, I think you see where I’m going with this, and while I’m obviously not going to quote myself verbatim, I would gently remind you of what I wrote 26 years ago this very day and sporadically ever since, because one has to do what one has to do . . .
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I for one am not about to schedule a game that would conflict with the more spiritual foci of our people of faith. Nevertheless, I just happened to be reading through the Gospel according to Matthew when it suddenly struck me that the Mattmesiter's most compelling contribution was probably his stirring depiction of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
In all candor, I’m not an expert in the ancient Hebraic tongues of the Eastern Mediterranean, and yet my own etymological analysis strongly suggests that the Aramaic slang word “mooundt” (meaning literally, “awesome anthill”) was somehow translated into ancient Hebrew as their word for “mount,” (meaning “nice mountain”), when in reality, the location where Jesus offered his beatitudes was on the “mound” (with a 'd').
No, I can’t prove this beyond a reasonable doubt, and I certainly don’t mean to cast aspersions on the fine folks who toiled at the Department of Translation in King James' Court. Yet I am suggesting that recent archeological breakthroughs now clearly imply that the ancient Israelites played a club-swinging ball game that was shockingly similar to our modern game of baseball, and more to the point, when Jesus rose to address the multitudes on that fateful ancient day, he did so from the pitcher's mound at the original Jerusalem Stadium and Rugby Club.
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Fine, I’m not gonna sit here and be braggadocio and say that I believe that this is the most persuasive prose ever written to convince you why playing softball on Easter Day is simply imperative for the protection of your mortal soul, but sure, I believe it was Orwell who said that “to see what is in front of one’s nose takes a constant struggle.” And therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning . . . Raymond