Softball: Spooky

[raymond...@gmail.com]

Dear People,

 

In one of those provocative gambits that stir the souls of tremulous folk everywhere, my peeps took on Chris Fure’s for the second straight week, and inherent in the match-up was a tacit implication that we weren’t just battling for an individual triumph, but rather we were also testing the very thesis that writing about a curse will only serve to solidify it (for a precise point of reference, see last week’s drivel at  https://groups.google.com/g/raysoftball/c/JjtRMmeMxyA). Needless to say, I didn’t set out to test anything outside the potential of my much derided captainship, yet after we jumped out to a dominating 3rd inning 16-6 lead, Stefano gently took me aside and with those gorgeous blue corneas now thoroughly moistened, haltingly whispered “you know we’re doomed, right?” Of course I immediately rejected the premise and told him to find his inner manly man, yet truth be told, I also worried that our very domination was the devil seed of a jinx renewed, and, as you’d expect, soon after an Andean cock-of-the-rock chirped frantically in the distance.

 

Sure enough, the Furinator’s peeps slowly clawed their way back, but only in unsightly fits and starts. In fact, when the great John McMurtrie was picked off at 2nd in the 6th for a ghastly rallying-killing double play with their team still down by 7, Jim McGuire was so horrified that he insisted I write about this later, for, as he made clear, “that’s how your emails work!” As the journalist in question, I’m not so sure about that, but I do know it was Professor McLoser himself who, just two innings later, popped up to short in the bottom of the 8th to end their transformative 9-run rally, thus stalling their ascent at a bone-chilling 27 up. It was, to be sure, a deeply satisfying development to observe, and yet ominously, a rare blue-beaked satanic nightjar still brayed anxiously in the oaks above.

 

Indeed, as we entered the 10th still tied, I was feeling guardedly optimistic but with a wary soupçon of dread (admittedly, though, I may have been thinking about the upcoming election as much as the match at hand). In any case, our one run lead in the top of that tranche was simply not enough, and yes, it was Jimmy McVoodoo whose searing walk off single brought his own aerobic atonement as well as his contingent’s disturbingly eerie 29-28 victory. That’s right—my teams have now lost three consecutive games and four of the last six in which we initially took charge with a double digit early-inning lead. No, I’m not whining, but I will seek out an aggressive and highly qualified exorcist, and therefore there will be game at Codornices this Sunday at 11 IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning . . . Raymond