10/28/15

Softball: 9:45 One Last Time (The Wondrous Clades of Evolutionary Biology)

Dear People,

First of all, let the record show that as of Saturday evening, we had suffered a series of nearly catastrophic cancels that left us with only 17 committed players, and thus gravely at risk for playing our first game with fewer than 18 athletes in nearly 13 years (or perhaps it was last Spring---I really can't remember). Let the record also show that I thrive on the elixir of ceaseless and scornful rejection, and thus I'm not ashamed to tell you that between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, I tried to woo over 20 of you by phone, email and semaphoric telegraph, and while that might make some feel unclean, the bottom line is that Kim Cohn Wilks happily agreed to play after getting my call at 10:04 that morning. Moreover, the fact is that just one hour later she went on to lead my own team to a scintillating 17-14 triumph over Jim McGuire's, proving once again that raw organizational heroism will always cleave to the supposed stigma of my own social slutitude. Yeah, I make no apologies.

In any case, the match itself was splendid and flawlessly executed by all, except of course in the bottom of 8th, when Brandon unleashed a searing 2-out RBI blast to right. Jim's peeps were in the middle of a ferocious rally but still down by three when their hero let loose. Fortunately, Martin played the bullet with both grace and aplomb, and at first it looked like Brandon would be held to a double. Yet he suddenly accelerated as he rounded 2nd, and with a celerity unknown to that moment, it was instantly clear that the triple was his for the taking. I still get chills when I recall the clarity of aerobic purpose deep within his fiercely focused eyeballs, though curiously, and for reasons I don't pretend to understand, he was apparently not 'satisfied' with a three-bagger either. Thus, and even though the ball had by now made its way to Noah at short, the Brandster barreled inexplicably past third and headed toward home, where he was promptly thrown out with a scant 13 feet to spare.

Now look, it would be easy to say that there is no plausible rationale for a player who risks his team's entire rally, momentum and moral standing on a 60-foot dash with an objective odds of success at somewhere between 30 and 50,000 to 1. Fair enough. Yet I happened to have recently come across an article on the surprising ubiquity of horizontal gene transfer across distantly related species (see http://aeon.co/magazine/science/how-horizontal-gene-transfer-changes-evolutionary-theory/ ), and while I don't want to needlessly speculate on complex areas of mitochondrial transmission, I do believe that we as a communal whole must accept the serious possibility that good ol' Brandyboy is one of those rare transgenic organisms who is as vitally human as you or me-except that he's 32.03% lemming. And therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 9:45AM (which, as I may have mentioned, is just like 11AM except it's 75 minutes earlier), IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning . . . Raymond


10/30/15

Softball: Chronomania! (9:45 + Clocks Back)

Dear People,

There will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 9:45 (yes, skim-readers, 9:45!) and as of this moment there are still four slots left. Now sure, it would be easy to be bitter at the pre-pubescent ankle-biting interlopers from the Albany-Berkeley Girl's Softball League who will be arriving to seize our field at noon, but the reality is that they are just like us, if it were already 2070.

In any case, the good news is that while you'll have to get up an hour earlier than usual, in fact it doesn't matter because you get to set your clock back an hour before you fall asleep tomorrow night. Yeah, it's practically a temporal wash, and if that isn't proof of an omniscient aerobic God, then I don't know what.

Please bring $4 for the field because there's no such thing as free verdant grasses . . . Raymond 845-7552

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