Softball: The Complexity of Kinesiological Kismet

[raymond...@gmail.com]

Dear People,

 

Let the record show that last Sunday’s match was one of the most grueling games to pull off in the 29-year history of this league, and not just because it showed that the future is always an unwritten mush of peril, uncertainty, and the inexplicably random. For starters, there is the weather in all its capricious taunts, and more specifically, the web-based weather prognosticators—Four of the four that I use were able to predict rain sometime on Sunday a full week out, and yet zero of them were able to usefully predict the timing of the rain that very morning! 

 

Indeed, as I gave the final go-ahead at 10:13AM, I was seeing semi-sunny climes outside but ceaseless overcast drizzle on the web, and thus I was only 51.07% sure we’d get past the first inning. Still, I felt I had no choice, for as you certainly know, your aerobic release is often the crown jewel of your week, and thus sometimes ya just gotta grab the bull by the risk-laden balls and let fate take its course. 

 

In any case, there was also the harrowing yo-yo of roster numbers, which began Friday morning with a shamefully low 16, followed by a steady rise to 19 by Saturday afternoon, before crashing back down to 15 a mere hour before the game thanks to a delayed plane, a nasty flu, and a late-breaking case of vicarious hydrophobia. Needless to say, I arrived at Bushrod feeling feckless and forlorn, and yet as luck would have it, the entire UC Berkeley Baseball Club was engaged in batting practice immediately adjacent to our field! 

 

Oh sure, I’m a painfully shy lad, and yet I transcended my timidity and instantly guilt-tripped four of them into our resourceful little community. Even better, the symmetrical icing on the cake was when Kyla and Danny volunteered their fearless 10-year-old Levi for his official league debut, and thus, as the sun broke through with the warmest rays of the month, one of the finest 20-person rosters I’ve ever had the pleasure of crafting now took to the field. And to think that some Godless Debbie-Downers still don’t believe in an all sport-lovin’ deity!

 

The game itself was crisp and joyous like a fine merlot, though after Eoin’s team initially jumped out to a dominating 6-0 1st-inning lead, both Jim McGuire and I calculated that I had made a grave stress-triggered error in team-balancing and that we were likely to lose by approximately 43 runs. Luckily, this turned out to be unhinged speculation, for over the next eight innings, I myself went 6 for 7 (!), Levi became our galvanizing moral backbone, and as best I could tell, our two Cal Baseball studs (Ryan and Trevor) outplayed, outwitted, and out-kickassed Eoin’s two Cal Baseball studs (Jeremy and Tim). In brief, it was an upset for the ages, as all great upsets are, and thus when it was over, Eoin’s team went down, and down hard, 34-22. Simply superb.

 

Now look, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “Ray, that’s all good and glorious, but it’s been raining for days and it looks like it might continue, and honestly, playing in sturgeon-infested swampland makes me feel unclean and even naughty.” Listen, I hear ya, but I also fear that you may have missed the point of this missive’s narrative arc, which is that while we may be drifting aimlessly in a callous quantum universe not of our own making, the basic reality remains that the future is unwritten (for us), and with all due respect, every fiber of my being says that the soil and grasses we so happily patter on will be damp but utterly playable and basking under the sunlight come time for the very first pitch. And therefore there will be a game at Bushrod this Sunday at 11 IF get enough commits by this Friday morning . . . Raymond