9/29/98
Softball: The Endless Quest for Municipal Acceptance
Dear People,
In a continuing display of contempt for our noble softball playing community, The Man has once again acted to close off all potential venues of aerobic real estate throughout the city of Berkeley. When I think that we are still treated like this, so many years after both Mahatma Ghandhi and Martin Luther King extolled the dignity of humanity and the inherent worth of all sport, I am overwhelmed with a curious melange of raw athletic grief and frothy determination. I guess I'm just that way.
The point is that as of now, I'm only 80% positive that I'll be able to get a field, and I know that to make a commitment on such a precarious foundation is a challenge to the very core of your deep seated need for moral certainty. I understand that. Still, you need to take the risk if we are to have any hope at all, and thus I want you to commit by this Friday morning to a game this Saturday, October 3rd at 11AM sharp, to be played somewhere in North Oakland or Albany, depending on which city beuracracy will give our wandering tribe the most dignified terms in overall grazing value.
While you may be hesitant to commit under these admittedly ambiguous conditions, I certainly don't need to remind you that this Saturday will be the 47th anniversary of Bobby "the trout" Thompson's bottom-of-the 9th three run playoff homer against the Dodgers, which gave the Giants a 5-4 victory in that game and the National League Pennant for 1951. I can assure you that when the trout stepped to the plate that fateful day, he could not "know" with certitude that all would end so well, but he was willing to gamble everything because he had the courage of his convictions. I think you see my point. Make that commit. Do it for Bobby "the trout" Thompson, whose love for baseball would have defiantly transcended the calamitous Je ne sais quoi of geographic instability...Raymond
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