Softball: Kids Today

[raymond...@gmail.com]

Dear People,

 

For the 29th time in the last 12 months, Chris Fure led his peeps against my own in a noble yet ultimately doomed effort that stalled, floundered, and then simply imploded in the final half inning for another one of his tragic dénouements. Now, in fairness, it wasn’t all about his managerial ineptitude (in fact, as a mere right fielder he was equally feckless, as perhaps best exemplified by Eoin’s critical 3-RBI 4-bagger just over his shell-shocked little eyeballs). Rather, it was also about what my side brought to the table beyond the usual burgers and kale, and in this case, I can point to the inspirational fillip that comes with dazzling multi-generational excellence in the throes of its own renewal. Whatever.

 

Specifically, I think of the spine-tingling 6th, when Anthony miraculously snagged James’ blistering low-flying 1-out 7th-inning bullet up the middle before immediately tossing it back to Burt for the jaw-dropping double-play pickoff at 1st. In all candor, it was a play of obvious grandeur and nearly Rothkoesque abstraction, and as that barely catchable throw bridged the often confuddled rapport between the spear of the boomers and the core of the millennials, I found myself verklempt. For yes, with that one DP, we had not only snuffed out their best rally of the match, but we had set up the fundaments for our triumph just as Zach Judd made his long-awaited community debut as a legendary high school athlete now making the harrowing transition from baseball to softball. 

 

Indeed, the Zachster’s first trips to the plate had been tentative and jejune, but each time back he showed ever greater hints of future Newtonian dominance, and even better, as Darwin came to bat as the tying run with two out in the bottom of the 9th, it was Zach who made that sublime and final running catch in the shallow gaps of craggy center-right. That’s right, he not only gave Gen Z a powerful new voice in our ceaselessly aging league, but he crushed the Furinator’s hopes yet one more time as his dispirited peeps went down, and down hard, 16-13. 

 

Yeah, it’s not easy being Chris, and that’s especially true when an indefinite pattern of flounder, rally and implode haunts your every athletic endeavor, but indefinite is not infinite, and no human failing is truly the latter. So yeah, unlike a circle or the number of integers of perhaps the universe itself, Chris’s teams will one day break free from this soul-crushing template of yearn and despair, and while today’s scrappy young teens may be in their 70s by the time it actually happens, hope will burgeon anew with every new cohort of softball-lovin’ spawn. And therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11 IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning . . . Raymond