Take 2: May be Having Google Group Email Issues....Softball: The Bitter Perils of Mistimed Peakage

[raymond...@gmail.com]

[Apologies if this you're getting this twice. Also, if responding, please let me know if the 'reply' does anything different---No matter what you see, you can only respond back to me and not the whole group, at least in theory]...

Dear People,

 

My team took on Stefano’s in a thrilling battle royale that was played against an ominous backdrop of both renewed Covidian ubiquity (three late cancels due to that despicable ’Rona) and my stark inability to balance for right and left-handed batters, thereby inadvertently giving the Stefster’s contingent all five of the lefties present that fateful ’morn. I obviously felt humiliated by my organizational ineptitude as soon as I was told what I had done, but Chris ‘the rebounder’ Fure would be on the mound for my side, and given his unseemly 5-inning 29-run collapse of the previous week, I knew that this time I could count on his robust batter-flummoxing blend of glandular, seminal, and spicy-sinker meat balls. 

 

Sure enough, for the first eight innings it all went fab. Indeed, lefty, schmefty, for our entire D was in objectively fine fettle, and thus their shameless Marxist assault was mostly thwarted by steady pitching, Dan May’s Hooveresque performance at 2nd and a calm competent outfield from James in left to Jerry S in right. Throw in slugging like Eoin’s searing 2-RBI 4th-inning double past Joe P’s fecklessly outstretched hands in deep sharp left and his follow-up 3-RBI 6th-inning moonshot to the sloped tundra beyond the center field succulents, and you could see why we took to the field in the top of the final tranche with a solid 19-15 lead and God on our side.

 

The Almighty, of course, is as capricious a mistress as there ever was, and when ya throw in the fact that you have people out there dying because they can’t buy bacon, well, I think you can start to understand the fragile momentum of any contextualizing zeitgeist. Yeah, I assume you see where I’m going with this, and it’s obviously not pretty, but it’s also not my job to traffic in cloying platitudes; To wit; Rebound Boy apparently failed to internalize the traditional import of the surprisingly relevant 9th inning, and thus as his focus faded and his clarity cratered, he proceeded to methodically give up 11 runs on 13 hits and 2 errors, thereby cementing his rep as the riskiest hurler in the history of the world.

 

Still, an inning is not a mere tool by which to tip the scales of aerobic opportunity, and so while the path was bleak and the odds were long, we still entered the bottom half of that fateful dénouement with our heads held high and our bosoms pert. Alas, though, while we clawed our way back from a 7-run deficit and soon put the winning run at the plate with two out and bases loaded, the fact is that we left that yearnful trio of ducks stranded on the pond, 26-23, proving once again that life's rich pageant is tragically steeped in the brackish waters of excellence, prematurely curdled. And therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11 IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning . . . Raymond