Softball and the flowery language of the English dept. boys
I’ve been playing a lot of softball lately with the boys of the English department. We’re the Black Scorpions of Death and we actually are pretty good. We kicked ass in our first game of the summer and we barely lost the game today.
The best thing about it is that it’s a good time. It’s weird, but a lot of people I know can’t believe that I am athletic. I grew up playing baseball, basketball, and every other sport I could find. I also played basketball in high school (not that I was a starter).
The only problem with the SIUC softball league is that they have some strange rules and the guys who run it seem partial to some teams. One rule that the scorpions have a hard time dealing with is the no swearing rule. Were English majors! We like to turn a phrase and express ourselves in flowery ways. This creates a string of words that the umpire has forbidden as obscenities. Last week we were warned. This week a player was kicked out of the game for expressing his feelings to the umpire. I thought we were all going to get the boot since the scene played like this (as close as I can remember):
Jo to Ump: What? That was a fucking ball when we were pitching to them!
Ump: One more and you’re out of the game.
Jo: You’re a horrible fucking umpire.
Ump: You’re out.
Jo is kicked out. He walks by.
Me: What the Hell is going on?
Kurt: Fuck, they fucking kicked Jo out.
Somebody else: That fucking ump sucks!
More swearing and loud pissed talk as I look over at the ump to see if we are going to get kicked off the field. He doesn’t do it this time.
We’ll see how it goes next time.
The best thing about it is that it’s a good time. It’s weird, but a lot of people I know can’t believe that I am athletic. I grew up playing baseball, basketball, and every other sport I could find. I also played basketball in high school (not that I was a starter).
The only problem with the SIUC softball league is that they have some strange rules and the guys who run it seem partial to some teams. One rule that the scorpions have a hard time dealing with is the no swearing rule. Were English majors! We like to turn a phrase and express ourselves in flowery ways. This creates a string of words that the umpire has forbidden as obscenities. Last week we were warned. This week a player was kicked out of the game for expressing his feelings to the umpire. I thought we were all going to get the boot since the scene played like this (as close as I can remember):
Jo to Ump: What? That was a fucking ball when we were pitching to them!
Ump: One more and you’re out of the game.
Jo: You’re a horrible fucking umpire.
Ump: You’re out.
Jo is kicked out. He walks by.
Me: What the Hell is going on?
Kurt: Fuck, they fucking kicked Jo out.
Somebody else: That fucking ump sucks!
More swearing and loud pissed talk as I look over at the ump to see if we are going to get kicked off the field. He doesn’t do it this time.
We’ll see how it goes next time.