Softball: A Deep Dive into Why Shit Happens

[raymond...@gmail.com]

Dear People,

 

Let the record show that Jim McGuire’s team beat my own by the skin of their teeth, 28-27*, and when I type an asterisk, I mean one on steroids with three tiny little raging-ass carets to boot ^^^. That’s right, a curious cackle of ten interloping wiffle ball players who were somehow allowed to rent our homeland at 1:00, deigned to let us finish off the top of the 7th inning as our possession of the field legally expired, but this merely meant that as Jim’s team went ahead on a 2-out RBI hopper to left at 1:06:22, the game was effectively over.  And when I say over, I mean after just 6 and 2/6^th innings! 

 

Needless to say, this type of aborted intra-tranche calamity was a first in the storied 28-year history of this league, and beyond all that, you no doubt find that last quotient algebraically jarring, even offensive. Fair enough, but I would gently remind you that sometimes reducing a fraction to its ‘simplest form’ does not capture the often subtle nuances of life as it’s actually played out, with its cornucopia of 3-out half innings and, obviously, the ceaseless sorrow of righteous triumphs denied (for a germane point of reference, see D.K. Slater’s explosive new treatise, Overrated: A Reappraisal of Numbers and why Humans Should Stop Using Them).  

 

The point is that this match was a see-sawing nail-biter played under blustery intermittent drizzle and the passions that come from battling both a robust opposing contingent and the broader abstractions of randomly limited time. And when seen in that light, there is, to be fair, a case to be made for suggesting that my team’s 27-22 lead at the end of a clean six innings had ethical value and even legal weight, but admittedly, the arguments are brittle and the case law is scant and even jejune. So yeah, Professor McSneaky’s team ‘won,’ but FWIW, I think that we as a reason-craving folk would do well to ask who is ultimately responsible for the tawdry nature of the triumph in question.

 

Unfortunately, as an amateur scholar of causation, I’m fairly befuddled. Sure, we could blame the Wifflettes, but it was the Department of Parks and Wreck that shamelessly rented them our homeland so early (after inexplicably telling me that they would be a defeatable shoal of crazed quinquennarians). Moreover, had the 20% of our players who arrived over 10 minutes later than requested actually arrived on time, as they were ceaselessly implored to do, we likely could’ve gotten through at least the

7th! To be sure, life is with people, and people are difficult.

 

And yet, who’s kidding who? As I’ve mentioned before, Calvin made clear that all of this ball-based brouhaha was predetermined by a lunatic deity over 6,000 years ago, while our best particle physicists now declare that the whole dang future was written 13.8 billion years before that! So yeah, it’s a tough call, but at the end of the long and ontological day, I think we can all agree that when it comes to true responsibility, being kindly goes only so far. That’s right, amigos mios, I say F the Wifflettes! And therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning . . . Raymond