Softball: A Republic if You Can Keep It
raymond...@gmail.com
Dear People,
On a dreary and drizzly East Bay day, I began my brief pre-match remarks with “I got two late cancels, which means we only have an even 20 players and no rotators, which means that even though we have plenty of ice, you simply cannot get injured.” And yet curiously, just five minutes later, Chris Fure slammed a blistering 1st-inning hopper straight to short, which, for reasons I don’t pretend to understand, the imperturbable Jim McGuire tried to catch with the right zygomatic bone of his tender little cranium, just outside his gorgeous hazel eyeball. Needless to say, he was injured, but the blood was within arguably acceptable bounds for the easily queasy, and indeed, within a couple minutes, Jimmy was ready to play and I had fully recovered from the trauma of nearby observance (for a germane point of reference, see D.K. Slater’s masterful new treatise, The Look-Aways: Nicholas, Rasputin, and the Craven Hemophobes of the Czarist Court in the Golden Era of Ballet and Tourniquets, 1905-1914).
To be sure, that hopper was a sign of the furies to come (no pun descended), and thus over the course of the next nine long and misty innings, both sides unleashed a staggering amount of firepower. Unfortunately, though, I lost the score sheet and don’t have my game notes, though I do remember that Professor McBungle was indeed injured zygomatically, and as such, he was unable to inspire his peeps with the ease and cohesion that I could bring to bear as the opposing captain. In any case, you’d be forgiven for thinking I’m describing a nail-biting Super Bowl, for my side went on to braise his team whole in a hot spicy wok of garlic, bok choy, and tragic insufficiency eel, 35-28.
The point is that even though bickering within our games is down 13% since its post-pandemic highs, rumors continue to swirl that President Benito Dickwad Trumpolini is going to divert a quarter of the troops he’s sending to quash the 3-hippies rebellion in war-torn Portland to Codornices, where, as we all know, the perils of insurrection fester like the tertiary syphilitic lesion on his psychotic little brain. Needless to say, I will lead our resistance with flowers and myrrh, and therefore there will be a game at Codorncies this Sunday at 11, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning . . . Raymond