Softball: The Varied Dimensions of Change

[raymond...@gmail.com]

Dear People,

 

While I obviously understand that you have no desire to see how the game-creating sausage is made, the fact is that this last match was a labor of unusually intensive love given that I got an unprecedented 4 cancels in 24 hours from a base of just 18 commits when the demographic cratering began. More dispiriting still, I then sent out an emergency wave of over 40 nudges in the form of shameless group emails, groveling voicemails, some cloying individual texts and even a couple bribes of dubious ethics, and yet despite it all, I arrived at the field that frightful ’morn with a roster that was still one short of our acceptable minimum quorum of 18 players. Truth be told, I had not felt so dirty since the last time this happened in the Spring of ’21, and thus while I considered just moving on and accepting the organizational disgrace that comes with, I also knew that I am nothing if not a surprisingly cogent social tart.

 

Luckily, the great non-league citizen Ari Kelman was just standing there minding his own business in deep foul left at 10:57AM when I shamelessly accosted him with tales of immediate hero status if he agreed to change his entire life and join us as player #18. Well, Mr. Spontaneous did just that, and thus 10 minutes later he was filling in on Chris Fure’s team as both 3rd baseman and the moral backbone of the entire enterprise. Yeah, before I get ahead of myself, let me say for the record that Ari is already as vital and cherished a member of this community as those of you who have been playing since we first emerged in 1997, and while you may bitterly object to the conceptual implications of such a statement, I think you already know that’s just how we roll.

 

In any case, Ari took immediate control with an early-inning RBI double, and he no doubt would’ve dominated for the rest of the match had he not had to bail in the 6th for what he said were ‘previous plans’ –– frankly, as curious and suspect an excuse as I’ve ever heard. No matter, for his presence had been transformative for the Furinator’s peeps, and while they had fallen behind 11-2 in the top of the third, they had already rallied hard by the time he skedaddled off to wherever one goes with said previous plans. Moreover, they continued to steadily excel with a rarefied blend of solid hitting, inspiring defense and a contemplative focus on Hegel's Phenomenology of Aerobic Spirit, and no player more so than the superstar second-gamer Annie Clinton, whose six hits, five RBIs and four runs left my own contingent floundering in the rank degradation of a 17-run reversal and jaw-dropping defeat, 30-21. Yeah, just wow.

 

The point is that mere games are technically inanimate institutions within the broader society, yet in some ways, they’re also living organisms that evolve with rapid-fire celerity and the inherent mystery that comes from their inscrutable human component parts. So yes, I suppose that managing one’s peeps from a 9-run lead to a 9- run defeat is not anything that deserves actual ‘praise,’ and yet I have to concede that I take a certain Darwinian pride in knowing that not only is this league in the process of ceaseless renewal with recent recruits like Ari and Annie and Azia, but for this last match, my side went down faster and harder than just about any extinct species of the last 30,000,000 years. And therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11 IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning . . . Raymond