We're Talkin' Softball

Anybody who's anybody knows that Liz and I greatly looked forward to Thursdays in MN, mostly because it was co-ed softball night on team Monkey Knife Fight. The fact that there were delicious 2-for1 Summits and cheap, not-entirely-disgusting pizza at The Pizza Pie and I after the games didn't hurt either but it was mostly about playing softball on a pretty good team in a pretty bad league. We never got on a team in St. Louis and other than one fill-in role in one game during a trip home (batted .500 for that season), we took a three-year hiatus from the "sport." Meanwhile, Monkey Knife Fight won the league championship without us, which "hurt". So I was pumped when, half way through the season, our neighbors invited us to play on their team last summer. Their team was ungood, having failed to win a game prior to our acquisition. It was a fun team none the less, populated mainly by lab rats (thus the team name, The Lab Rats) originally hailing from other countries. It's also fun to be a better than average player on a pretty poor team, wowing them with skills such as pop-up catching and knowing when there's a force out. Alas, team captains Chris and Mandy had a baby this spring so the team was disbanded.

Instead, Chris and I have been playing with our other neighbor Paul's (of Paul and Diedre fame) team, Dedham VFW (I know, what kind of stupid name is that?). It is an entirely different game than what I have been used to playing. First, it's a men's league, which ups the competitiveness substantially. Second, it's modified fastpitch, meaning that although you can't windmill your arm, certain pitchers (usually cagey veterans in their sixties) can sling the ball in pretty rapidly, probably in the low-50 MPH range. Also, you can leave the base as soon as the ball leaves the pitcher's hand although the catcher can throw to the base you left and it's a force out. People get picked off, albeit infrequently. I was a little nervous playing in my first game, what with not wanting to suck and all. I got subbed in at 2B after the started had struck out thrice, but didn't get up to bat. In the second game I hit two Texas league doubles and made two nice put outs on bad throws at second. Since then I've been hitting well over .700 despite probably a third of my hits being bloops. I either hit 'em hard or so weakly that the outfielders don't have a chance. They all look the same in the scorebook, as the saying goes. So far we're 9 and 5, good for 4th place out of 8 teams in the league. Yesterday we played a team of mostly Spanish speaking gentlemen, four or five of whom were in the 5'5'' range and several of whom wore the number nine. We were joking about there having been a tense Mexican standoff about who got to wear "9" but fortunately someone came up with the "everybody can wear 9" solution before there was bloodshed (shortest guy: "Even me?" Other guys: "Yes, Pepe, even you.") Borderline interesting fact: Spanish speakers yell "quatro" when telling someone to throw the ball home. I maybe expected "casa."

The people on the team are pure Boston gold. We normally head down to the VFW after the games for cheap beer and gambling. Any kind of gambling. Darts? Five dollar buy-in tournaments. Poker games? Affirmative. Celebrity dead pool? Oh you better believe there's a celebrity dead pool (10$ buy in, pay out depends on how young your pick died). Many bars out here have video keno in them, sort of like pull tabs. We play "ghetto keno" however, which means everyone picks a number and you win if your and only your number comes up, dollar a round. The first week a ~100 dollar pot was won by the coach's 13 year old son. Our shortstop (currently benched by a bout of gout), the first person to consistently call me Ricky since 1984, was giving him grief about buying a round with his winnings. "You effed up my playoff pool last year, I don't owe you nothin'!" says the kid. The next week, the same guy was asking him if he'd blown his 100 bucks yet. "It was only 80 after I paid back this ass clown!" says the kid, referring to his father who'd fronted him all the dollars the week before. The dad calls the kid "Shithead," though, so turnabout, fair play, etc. In addition to these characters, there's a bookie, a guy who generally shows up still hammered, sits on the bench and has a few more beers, then goes in and plays a few innings of pretty solid ball, a guy who wears blue Bike coaching shorts that leave very, very little to the imagination, and a gay guy whose home run percentage is probably .700 (I have since been told that the guy is not actually gay, they were just "messin' with me"). Bettter story if he's gay but whatever. I understand the post-season party is epic to there's that to look forward to.

In the Footsteps of Dr. Foster

Had a nice little Memorial Day weekend out here. We ate ribs not once, not twice, but thrice. We also did some masonic work necessitated by the excessive spring rainfall:

Who patched up this retaining wall?

Put cancer in Lance Armstrong's ball?

Wee Dooooo. Wee Dooooooo.

I probably shouldn't tell you this, but we also hid an ancient secret behind one of the stones that the world's most powerful entities would literally kill for. Which stone, you ask? Well, the trick is realizing that the stones follow a non-Euclidean geometric pattern superimposed over a Fibonacci grid corresponding to the chapter headings in Plato's Republic. Once you figure that out, it's pretty obvious. What secret, you ask? Oh, simply a collection of arcane documents that would blow the roof off of everything we think we know about God, the origins of the universe, secrets of the ancient Mayan calendar, the stock market, and Sasquatch. Fine, it's a complete set of 1989 Donruss baseball cards and a copy of that Playboy that has Shannen Doherty in it.

On Monday, we, like Dr. Foster before us, went to Gloucester. It was sunny despite some haze from those wildfires up in Quebec, so no puddles were encountered and if they had been, we would not have stepped in them since we were on bicycle rather than foot. Thus, I think we'll probably go there again.