Softball: A Musical (The Cantata of Management Failed)
Dear People,
Chris Fure's team totally decimated my own, 21-6, and I think I know why. Oh sure, it would be easy to note that Saadia, Jay and Zac were among my very best sluggers, and yet between the three of them, they still had fewer hits than Vanilla Ice. But that's too snarky by half, and in the end, I think something else was going on. Of course it would also be easy to say that having Julia play center-right was a tactically 'dubious' decision, and yet let the record show that for her first aerobic appearance in over two years, she was nothing less than the moral backbone of our entire team. Still, her performance suggests that some of us have a truly broad and nuanced range of skill sets, and for Julia, that happens to include being both an up 'n' coming singer-songwriter extraordinaire, as well as the very embodiment of an artist qua outfielder qua sieve (with a certain je-ne-sais-catch).
Nor, for that matter, do I believe that it's somehow Byron who led Chris' peeps to such a merciless triumph, and that's in spite of his explosive outbreak at the plate. To be sure, this soft-spoken Aussie enigma was playing his last match before moving to Boston, and perhaps with that as the spark in his innards, he let loose for more multi-base blasts than any other athlete there. Yet let me be clear; His actual swing of the bat is a Euclidian mess, with a sweeping arc toward the ground that reflects a deeply conflicted soul who remains stubbornly drawn to his childhood cricket, lacrosse or perhaps Greco-Melbournian rugby-who the fuck knows what they actually play down there?! The point is that his final-match contributions were honorable, and yet in the end, too aesthetically disturbing to explain the massacre in question.
No, dear friends, I believe the real reason that my team imploded was that there's a thin mauve line between galvanizing inspiration and ontological degradation, and by crossing it, it's me and me alone who triggered my side's horrific implosion. More specifically, you can only tell a frightened passel of already-floundering players that they are “so much better on paper” so many times before such an objectively annoying abstraction begins to burn deep in the bosom. I meant well, of course, but after screaming it out for the third time in as many innings, I could see my posse looking back up at me in embittered defiance. Indeed, I suppose it suddenly hit them that if they had truly been on paper, they would've still been floundering, but this time in some kind of spatially warped archipelago-jejune, distant beyond words, and hideously one-dimensional.
The point is that motivational captainship is a starkly treacherous ladylove, and because of that I'm not ashamed to admit that I just reread Dale Carnegie's classic work of personal growth, How to Win Friends and Influence People who are in a Phase of Athletic Suckage. So yeah, I expect to lead ever gooder, and therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning . . . Raymond
PS: A rising star among us:
https://www.facebook.com/juliasinclairband
PPS: The great Steve Seskin, mentor to Julia Sinclair, singer-songwriter extraordinaire in his own right, and a towering symbol of thrice-yearly understated dominance behind the plate, will be performing this Sunday night at the Freight and Salvage! Details here. . .
http://www.thefreight.org/steve-seskin-amy-speace-kenny-white
11/19/14
Softball: Quickly from Boalt, where I Toil Under Unspeakable Stress
Dear People,
There will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11 and as of now it's already full. As always, please let me know ASAP if you committed and need to cancel, and if you still want in, feel free to get on the wait list or contact me later for news of reopened slots.
$4 for the field/More notes of import later…….Raymond
11/21/14
Softball: CRITICAL UPDATE (Grrrr…): Crisis, Continuity and Courage…
Dear People,
Much to my amazement, the city of Berkeley has shut down and fenced off Codornices Park for reseeding, despite the fact that nobody at the Department of Parks and Wreck told me anything, and despite the fact that I had already paid for the field for this Sunday (I was informed of the fence by community members a couple days ago, but had assumed it would still be open for us because, uh, ya know, a deal's a deal). Even worse, I learned today that all other city fields are apparently taken by others for the next two Sundays, and we therefore face our gravest crisis as a community since the infamous Codornices double-booking of 5-18-05.
It's tempting to go off on a rant on how this is the kind of governmental behavior that transforms kindly yet impressionable souls into raving tea-party nutjobs or annoying anarchist lunatics (though rarely both for the same person), but I don't got time for that. The bottom line is that this upcoming game was supposed to be Corey's last before he moved to world-famous Iowa, and thus I'll be damned if I'm going to let an outrageous collapse of basic bureaucratic competence prevent that from happening.
And therefore: Chris Fure and I have zeroed in on the Clark Kerr campus field as our backup homeland du jour. She's a bit smaller than ideal and certainly moist as I peck these very words, and perhaps as importantly, we have no guarantees that she'll be available Sunday at 11. However, we're a stout and risk-embracing people by both birth and temperament, and the plan for now is for Chris to be there at 10:30 Sunday to seize her sensual grasses. Hopefully he will report back with promising news, and I will send out the go-ahead at approximately 10:34.27.
Resolve . . . Raymond
PS: CK Softball Diamond is just off of Dwight, near the top of the road:
http://recsports.berkeley.edu/facilities/fields/golden-bear-softball-field/
PPS: As of now, we are still full with a wait list of two; I'm assuming that if the game goes forward, all who committed will show up at the new location unless I hear otherwise.
PPPS: Yeah, unaffiliated email-organized softball has never been easy, but if that's all we wanted, we would've settled for nude croquet years ago.
11/23
Softball: Sunday, 9:51AM: Change of Plans/The Ceaseless Churn of Aerobic Risk!/Levine-Frick Field above Cal Stadium it is!!
Dear Fellow Dedicated Athleticists,
Clark-Kerr is now occupied by a bunch of archery-club members-can there by anything more annoying?!-BUT, Levine-Frick Softball Field, and the huge Witter astroturf football field right next door, are open, available and gorgeous. Chris Fure will be there by 10:20ish, holding down the fort for us, but the more people that get up there ASAP, the better. I've checked the field schedules----nothing there official until 4:30.
A final confirmation email will be going out after Chris arrives/Stay tuned….Ray
PS: Levine-Frick (Strawberry Canyon) Softball Field is located above the Cal football stadium: Take Piedmont Ave, turn East on Stadium Rim Way (by the old Maxwell Astroturf field, now being rebuilt), then East on Centennial Drive. It about 100 yards up, on the right.
Plenty of parking, $1 an hour (Of course no field fee-what the Lord giveth…)….
http://recsports.berkeley.edu/facilities/fields/levine-fricke-field/
PPS: Focused inner calm!/This is no time for cowardice!!...
11/23/
Softball: Sunday 10:27AM: Good to go!
See ya there at 11 or earlier…
http://recsports.berkeley.edu/facilities/fields/levine-fricke-field/
PS: We'll have our choice of fields! A cornucopia of aerobic riches!...