11/2/05
Softball: A Foray into the Aesthetic Realm
Dear People,
Over the years I’ve sometimes found myself wondering why I spend so much time and energy bringing together such a curiously evolving mix of local assorted lunes, but then a game like last week’s washes away all my organizational doubts, and I realize anew that when its played with zest, conviction and a tingly je-ne-sais-quoi, unaffiliated email-organized softball is the most glorious endeavor in the infinite array of human experience. Oh sure, I have a slight penchant for superlatives that arguably cut way too close to the bone, yet the hard reality is that my team crushed Frank’s, 28-27, in a three-hour 10-inning masterpiece that redefined sport as art, as if the match itself were nothing less than a veritable aerobic canvas of conflicting Rothkoesque emotion.
Indeed, by game’s end I had personally gone through the entire gamut of emotive lows and highs (the blues and the teals, if you will). Most painfully, I remember the traumatizing 4th, when I told Jessie—our new scorekeeper from Guangzhou who is currently the object of perhaps a dozen secret SinoCrushes—that in her honor, I was about to blast a home run straight out of the park. As I sauntered from the dugout, she turned to me with those confused but disarming Chinese eyes, smiled, giggled, and then blurted out "YOU?!," as if she didn’t believe I could even lift the bat, much less get a hit. Fortunately, I was able to pop-up to short, proving once again that if expectations are low enough, a smidgen of pride can always be salvaged.
Still, the cumulative sting to my ego lingered throughout the innings, leaving me a vulnerable shell of my normally perky self. But then in the bottom of the 9th, with the score tied, two on, and my team facing imminent catastrophe, Broh snagged a blistering low line-drive to deep center-left with his impossibly outstretched hand, in what was probably the greatest game-saving catch in the history of the earth.
That we were able to go on and triumph in the very next inning only added to my feelings of sudden contentment, and while I certainly don’t want the arc of this missive to appear in any way contrived, it was, in retrospect, as if Broh’s miracle was the final sweeping brushstroke of abstract expression in its purest form. If nothing else, I think all of us who witnessed it can certainly agree on that, and therefore there will be a game at San Pablo #2 this Sunday at 11AM, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning…Raymond
11/4/05
Softball: Expenditures
Dear People,
There will be a game at San Pablo #2 this Sunday at 11AM, and as of now, there are still three slots left.
Please bring $3 for the field, only some of which goes to support my felonious habits…Raymond 845-7552
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