Softball: The Compelling Craft of Really Bad Athletic Prose
Dear People,
My team stunned Ellen’s 19-14, in one of those explosive aerobic paradigms of ceaselessly emotive transmogrification. I think of the bottom of the 9th, in particular, when Olga took charge with a breathtaking lead-off triple to center-left, just 150 feet over Anthony’s desperately outstretched glove. Her galvanizing spark brought loud and joyous waves of caution-tinged semi-hope to Ellen’s entire team, but of course, a single transcendent act of pure aerobic glory does not a rally make.
Alas, by the time Tom O reached the plate, they were down to their very last out and still five runs back, yet there were two runners on, the cream of their roster was neigh (yes, neigh), and in all candor, I myself was feeling tremulous and queasy. It’s hard being captain. In any case, Enid pitched a series of devastating off-speed sliders with a four-seam outlay on the backend, and suddenly, Tom was facing a full count!
A yak brayed in the distance, time seemed to freeze, and as the blended ghosts of Rod Serling and Ty Cobb hovered overhead, the Tomster went down looking—Let me repeat that; On the last pitch of the game, Tom O went down looking!!—as Enid’s yaw-laden sinker just barely grazed the outer edge of our cherished filthy green strike-zone carpette! Talk about your unprecedented anti-climactic climaxes!
In any case, the Tomster accepted his fate with chilling stoic integrity, but just minutes afterward, I learned of the tacit drama behind this staggering denouement. Yes, Chris Fure sheepishly confided in me that way back in the 5th inning, he had used Tom’s beloved nuclear-tipped Miken bat to pound one of his signature blasts to left. Alas, though, in so doing, he cracked the bat’s famed $400 composite underbelly from its head to its lower shaft, thus rendering it nothing more than a useless metal stick with a puzzling phallic metaphor problem.
The point is that Chris didn’t just mortally fracture a perfectly innocent bat that fateful afternoon, for it’s quite apparent in retrospect that Tom O himself—focused, laconic and inscrutable as ever—had had his own distracted heart totally cleaved in two. Indeed, Chris may have split asunder the metallurgic innocence of a bat, a man, a team, and in ways we don’t really understand, our entire generation. And therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11AM, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning…Ray
1/18/08
Softball: Your Voices Heard
Dear People,
There will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11, and as of now there are still two slots left.
Please bring $3 for the field, which for this week only includes your right to participate in a series of special post-game cauci in which we will vote on the No Infield Fly Rule, the Run-to-the-Side-of-First-Base Rule, and the No Shameless-Demagogic-Buffoons-like-Romney Ever Allowed in Our Community Rule…Ray 845-7552
PS: Some things to Consider:
i) A Target Too Easy:
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/mitt_romney_defends_himself
ii) Living in Time:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=GUHLa1qSy24
iii) The Acceptable Limits of “Reinterpretation”:
http://cgi.fark.com/cgi/fark/youtube.pl?IDLink=3332397