Sweep the Leg
No softball this weekend, which is a bummer. We played last week and though it rained on and off, and we got clobbered, it was still fun. The Mark Bar played against the cleverly-named Balls Deep, a team led by the commissioner of the league and packed with ringers. I needed a TI-85 to calculate how many runs they scored on us (pre-calc humor!). With no hope of defeating them athletically, we opted for subtle psychological ploys; ie, taunting them with scrotally-themed insults, like calling them the Nut Sacks and the Teabags. Their uniforms were baby blue, so Blue Balls worked quite well; this epithet seemed to irk them more than any other (too close to home?), but it did not prevent them from going yard batter after batter. My only solace was, by playing right field, I did not have to field any bombs tossed against their almost entirely right-handed lineup.
At the plate, I went 2 for 3, scored a run, and ended the game by needlessly barreling into the third baseman in the bottom of the ninth, just after he fielded a ground ball. I hoped my heft would dislodge the ball, and in the split second that I committed to acting like an offensive tackle instead of a base runner, I received brief glimpses of doom. I could seriously hurt this person and get sued. Or I could seriously injure myself, and spend many moons laid up in a hospital bed. Or, I could escape unscathed but spark a brawl between the teams, and wind up in jail. As it turned out, the third baseman was made of granite, because when my shoulder connected with his pelvis, I bounced right off of him and tumbled earthward, making a three-point landing in the damp dirt of the infield. Some laughs and a small dosage of humiliation were my only consequences.
When the team repaired to our sponsor to lick our wounds with beer, we discovered that our Hated Rivals were also drinking there. I initially took this as a slap in the face. Imagine if Johnny and all of Cobra Kai showed up at Mr. Miyagi's house for a drink. Would you stand for that? Well, you would if your team just lost by twenty-seven runs (give or take a dozen). And eventually, all animosity was washed away in a tide of good sportsmanship and alcohol. Blue Balls may have won the game, but we won the Good Sportsmanship award--which, as you know, is a bent bowling trophy from the Salvation Army with the word PUSSY scratched on it s surface.