Softball: Some Recent Headlines of which I’ve Taken Note

[raymond...@gmail.com]

Dear People,

 

On an utterly gorgeous Father’s Day morn,’ my team took on Chris Fure’s with élan and grace, and yet nothing was inevitable, for Chris’ peep’s showed defiance and vim in spite of their limited faith in management. In any case, both contingents displayed flashes of athletic glory, and that’s especially true for the Furinator’s side, which initially fell into a harrowing 8-2 1st-inning abyss. Indeed, I think of the zeitgeist-shifting 4th, with Burt’s searing RBI-oppo down the 3rd-base line, and, in the bottom of that fateful tranche, Bobby Fulgham’s magnificent soccer-channeling bobble-and-kick from the mound to 1st, which, in a single act of fine-footed grandeur, stripped away Kira’s single, our own momentum, and the basic boundaries of dignity that define the sport itself. Yeah, the damage was done, and thus in the taut innings ahead, my side would flounder, and flounder hard.

 

So much so that by the time we took to the plate in the bottom of the 9th, our lead and confidence had evaporated, and we were now facing our own two-run deficit. Of course no contingent has a monopoly on moxie, and while we initially struggled in the moribund throes of our imminent dusk, Paul Horsepool smashed a life-extending 2-out 1-on single to left that brought the great Cameron Klotz to the fulcrum of our destiny. That’s right, we were down to our very last out, but I was now at 2nd, Paul was the tying run at 1st and the Camster was about to swing away as the potential winning run with nothing less than our lives in the balance. Sure, perhaps that’s a tad hyperbolic, but as Bobby unleashed his sinking 1-1 fecundity ball and Cameron prepared to respond, time itself seemed to freeze as a transfixed tufted titmouse trilled tremulously in the distance.

 

And then it happened. 

 

Cameron unleashed a blistering line drive straight up the middle that took off right toward my perfectly innocent schnoz. The fact is that I had less than .3 seconds to react, and truth be told, I might not have done so in time had I not suddenly remembered that it was indeed Father’s Day. That’s right my fellow non-breeders, le Jour de Papa, and given that a confluence of new right-to-know laws has recently made the latest breakthroughs in DNA-reading technologies all the more relevant to my halcyon pre-clipped college days of monthly cash-generating sperm donations, I was not about to let that orb take me down for good without letting my possible scores of middle-aged spawn get their chance to size me up first. 

 

Yeah, I suppose we’re all galvanized in different ways, but that’s what I was thinking as my neck jerked back and that bullet-like ball darted just past my fragile little head and beyond Jim McGuire’s desperately outstretched glove. After that, it skipped past Anthony and into deep center-right, and thus just ten seconds later, Cameron came streaking home to seal the deal clean, 20-19. For the great Chris Fure, it was a tragic denouement that further tainted his cratering managerial rep, and for poor Professor McMissedIt, it was his last bittersweet play before heading off for nearly two softball-bereft months in the lush snake-and-froggy-rich mountains of the Sulawesian outback. 

 

Now just to be clear, of course, life is a psychic dialectic, and for Cameron, his heroism catapulted him into the top elite tier of our league’s most consequential athletes (with the concomitant signing bonus that obviously comes with). And yes, for me and my theoretical little seedlings, there is still the abstract potential of existence, contact and kin-confuddling renewal. And therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning . . . Raymond