Softball: Considerations of a Potential Academic Trajectory
Dear People,
Paul Fine made his community debut as captain, and although he initially looked frightened, a tad kafackled and simply overwhelmed by the sheer breadth of his new responsibilities (setting the roster, leading by example, anointing the sickly, and so on), his team exploded for 12 runs on 10 hits and 23,000 errors in the top of the 8th, and when it was all over, my side went down, and down hard, 18-11. For me, this was an especially bittersweet outcome since I'm always inspired when a managerial debutante can successfully galvanize his peeps. Yet at the same time, I couldn't help thinking how unjust it was that Enid was denied her own Mother's Day triumph, despite having batted in her cherished son Grady twice, on two gorgeous line drives to deep shallow right. Yep, all for not (or naught, or perhaps knot-I've never really understood the English tongue).
At the end of the over-clichéd day, I suppose that this is the tragic dialectic of sport itself-potentially wounding, zero-sum, and utterly indifferent to the tender aerobification of the maternal-filial bond. So sure, Paul could return to campus with his head held high, and no doubt that his adoring staff at the Fine Lab would fete him as the Renaissance dude that he's now become. Fair enough; Rare is the towering giant that's mastered both recreational captainship and Amazonian arbolic diversity through the use of molecular phylogenetics (I suppose that I have, but am I not the other exception that proves the rule?).
In any case, I can't help thinking that a few years from now, when young Grady Camps enters Cal and begins his own intellectual journey into the magical world of integrative biology, he'll joyously frolic in the courses on invertebrate zoology, human reproduction and an introduction to the social lives of hideous-looking rodentia. Yet for reasons that even he won't consciously understand, one day he'll probably tell a pal that “I hear Professor Fine has this awesome class in Amazonian arbolic diversity through the use of molecular phylogenetics, but, uh, for some reason I'd rather learn Yiddish instead.” Yeah, the Butterfly Effect is nothing if not subtle and enduring, and therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11….Raymond
PS: Same Planet, Different Worlds….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tM0Pg_KKV8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRxjJZFGgNM&feature=related
…and from my generation….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLc-bh_DrKw
5/18/12
Softball: The Organizational Challenges of Lumpy Demand
Dear People,
There will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11, and as of now there are still seven slots left. You are therefore welcome to commit any non-community people you know, so long as they'd actually show up, play fair, and be willing to follow our admittedly curious and exotic rituals.
Please bring $4 for the field, which for this week only includes a sumptuous post-match pan-toasted dumpling filled with everything found in my traditional Peking duck roll!....Raymond 845-7552
PS: Chris Fure, towering softball superstar and film-maker extraordinaire, wants 46.32 minutes of your cosmologically inscrutable life, and I think you just might want to give it to him…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMBUKXXTCrM&feature=youtu.be