Eli's Coming
Jul. 17th, 2008 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfieldDAN: Eli's coming.
CASEY: Eli?
DAN: From the Three Dog Night song.
CASEY: Yes.
DAN: Eli's something bad. A darkness.
CASEY: "Eli's coming, hide your heart girl." Eli's an inveterate womanizer. I think you're getting the song wrong.
DAN: I know I'm getting the song wrong, but when I first heard it, that's what I always thought it meant, and things stick with you that way.
- Josh Charles (as Dan Rydell) and Peter Krause (as Casey McCall) in the SportsNight episode "Eli's Coming."
Softball Game: July 16, 2008
LOST 15-5, record 6-2
J. wanted to come and watch me play softball on Thursday. She almost never wants to do this, not only out of respect for my "outside time" but also out of fear that she will somehow get drafted into playing, which is apparently near the top of her list of fears between "death" and "turning on the air conditioning."
I myself am always sort of torn over the issue, because I love to show off for my girlfriend and I enjoy the moral support, but it also puts a lot of pressure on me to perform. It takes me back to my little league days, in that I would play better when my dad wasn't around, and afterward I would have this secret hope that maybe he was hiding in the bushes so as not to spook me. To my knowledge, he never did this and really was at headquarters in New Jersey.
At the risk of discouraging her from future visits, I suggested that she may want to sit out this particular game, since we were going to be playing in a crummy public field (also described here) way the hell up in D.C.'s Shaw neighborhood. In realtor parlance, Shaw is a community "in transition," which is to say that your car stereo, for example, is in the process of being transitioned to someone else's vehicle.
As it turns out, it's a good thing she stayed home. I wish I had stayed home.
It didn't take long for me to realize that it wasn't going to be my night; while stretching, some small grassborne creature bit me on my right hand, causing the area between my thumb and forefinger to swell up to the size of a meatball.
In my first at-bat, I grounded out weakly to the pitcher. "Weakly" isn't even doing justice to the decrepitude of my swing; replays would probably imply that the ball was made out of lead.
In my second-at bat, I hit the ball quite nicely into deep left field, but it was directed right at the left-centerfielder. I ran hard anyway, and as I rounded first I saw that he missed it and could not find the ball. I quickly rounded second and glided into third, only to find that the left fielder had thrown a strike right to the third baseman. In the split second that I was deciding whether or not to slide, I couldn't make up my mind and compromised by nearly hyperextending my right knee. I was the third out.
In my third and final at-bat, with a runner on second, I lofted a lazy pop fly into shallow left for an easy third out.
In between all this flailing in the batter's box, I had what was probably my worst night ever in the field. Once I overthrew the second baseman on an easy force-out, three times I flung easy ground balls into the dirt at first and once I somehow managed to toss a ball over the catcher's head from no more than four feet away. In the final inning, after I had been mercifully removed from the pitcher's mound, I wrenched my back on a throw from third to first baseman (which, naturally, sailed over his head). It was a relatively decent night of pitching, if I may say so, especially since at least half of them were technically unearned because of all my stupid errors.
And, lest I forget, at some point in the middle of the game I was struck in the shin from a screaming liner off the bat of my opponent. It riccocheted so sharply off of my leg that it actually split the fingernail on my left index finger.
We lost the game in pretty humiliating fashion, with our best player knocking in four of our five runs on two inside-the-park homers, and the rest of us wallowing in our own suckitude. I also thought that the other team were sort of assholes about the whole thing, although this may just have been a product of my own pain and frustration. Nobody else seemed bothered by all their obnoxious hooting and hollering, including the fat cocksucker on their bench exhorting their batters to "knock the pitcher out of the game," whatever that shit meant.
It was one of those games that is better off forgotten, and this remembrance has already gone on too long.
My statistics:
0-for-3
7 IP, 15 runs
Season-to-date
12 for 19 (.631), 11 runs, 7 RBI, 3 HR
29 IP, 61 runs (18.93 ERA/9, 14.72 ERA/7)
CASEY: Eli?
DAN: From the Three Dog Night song.
CASEY: Yes.
DAN: Eli's something bad. A darkness.
CASEY: "Eli's coming, hide your heart girl." Eli's an inveterate womanizer. I think you're getting the song wrong.
DAN: I know I'm getting the song wrong, but when I first heard it, that's what I always thought it meant, and things stick with you that way.
- Josh Charles (as Dan Rydell) and Peter Krause (as Casey McCall) in the SportsNight episode "Eli's Coming."
Softball Game: July 16, 2008
LOST 15-5, record 6-2
J. wanted to come and watch me play softball on Thursday. She almost never wants to do this, not only out of respect for my "outside time" but also out of fear that she will somehow get drafted into playing, which is apparently near the top of her list of fears between "death" and "turning on the air conditioning."
I myself am always sort of torn over the issue, because I love to show off for my girlfriend and I enjoy the moral support, but it also puts a lot of pressure on me to perform. It takes me back to my little league days, in that I would play better when my dad wasn't around, and afterward I would have this secret hope that maybe he was hiding in the bushes so as not to spook me. To my knowledge, he never did this and really was at headquarters in New Jersey.
At the risk of discouraging her from future visits, I suggested that she may want to sit out this particular game, since we were going to be playing in a crummy public field (also described here) way the hell up in D.C.'s Shaw neighborhood. In realtor parlance, Shaw is a community "in transition," which is to say that your car stereo, for example, is in the process of being transitioned to someone else's vehicle.
As it turns out, it's a good thing she stayed home. I wish I had stayed home.
It didn't take long for me to realize that it wasn't going to be my night; while stretching, some small grassborne creature bit me on my right hand, causing the area between my thumb and forefinger to swell up to the size of a meatball.
In my first at-bat, I grounded out weakly to the pitcher. "Weakly" isn't even doing justice to the decrepitude of my swing; replays would probably imply that the ball was made out of lead.
In my second-at bat, I hit the ball quite nicely into deep left field, but it was directed right at the left-centerfielder. I ran hard anyway, and as I rounded first I saw that he missed it and could not find the ball. I quickly rounded second and glided into third, only to find that the left fielder had thrown a strike right to the third baseman. In the split second that I was deciding whether or not to slide, I couldn't make up my mind and compromised by nearly hyperextending my right knee. I was the third out.
In my third and final at-bat, with a runner on second, I lofted a lazy pop fly into shallow left for an easy third out.
In between all this flailing in the batter's box, I had what was probably my worst night ever in the field. Once I overthrew the second baseman on an easy force-out, three times I flung easy ground balls into the dirt at first and once I somehow managed to toss a ball over the catcher's head from no more than four feet away. In the final inning, after I had been mercifully removed from the pitcher's mound, I wrenched my back on a throw from third to first baseman (which, naturally, sailed over his head). It was a relatively decent night of pitching, if I may say so, especially since at least half of them were technically unearned because of all my stupid errors.
And, lest I forget, at some point in the middle of the game I was struck in the shin from a screaming liner off the bat of my opponent. It riccocheted so sharply off of my leg that it actually split the fingernail on my left index finger.
We lost the game in pretty humiliating fashion, with our best player knocking in four of our five runs on two inside-the-park homers, and the rest of us wallowing in our own suckitude. I also thought that the other team were sort of assholes about the whole thing, although this may just have been a product of my own pain and frustration. Nobody else seemed bothered by all their obnoxious hooting and hollering, including the fat cocksucker on their bench exhorting their batters to "knock the pitcher out of the game," whatever that shit meant.
It was one of those games that is better off forgotten, and this remembrance has already gone on too long.
My statistics:
0-for-3
7 IP, 15 runs
Season-to-date
12 for 19 (.631), 11 runs, 7 RBI, 3 HR
29 IP, 61 runs (18.93 ERA/9, 14.72 ERA/7)
