Ball 13: In the Shadow of Greatness

[penfield]

I've talked repeatedly and at length about the playing field situation for the House Softball League. There simply isn't enough space out on the national mall for all 150-plus softball teams, plus the aforementioned kickball dipshits, opportunistic soccer-playing eurotrash, the occasional large-scale, pseudo-intellectual mall demonstration, half-stoned and gloriously unwashed Frisbee players and hapless tourists looking anxiously for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. (Don't bother, it sucks.)

Teams often have to dispatch their office's weakest and most easily influenced co-worker, usually an intern, to sit and claim a field well in advance of the actual game. On popular game days like Thursdays, this can require the individual to bake in the midsummer sun as early as 3 in the afternoon. Many teams have a specific listing for team leaders in heat stroke and melanoma.

Luckier and wealthier teams can spring for an official field permit, granted by the D.C. Parks Department and spatially engineered by retarded monkeys. The map of available fields looks like an abstract expressionist painting. But it is nice to play a team with a permit. No stress, no squatting, and if anyone wanders into your sanctioned space you are allowed to shoot them.

My Green Team (Team Motto: "We're not dead yet") played a team with a permit this past week, just between the Washington Monument and the White House ellipse. It was a pretty nice field, on nice flat ground, even though there were manhole covers^* scattered throughout the infield and outfield. It reminded me of my first year playing softball in D.C. with the National Journal Nine, the ancient ancestor of our current Green Team, when we had a permitted field right next to the Washington Monument and two different players whose last names were male body parts. Those were golden days. Beyond being aesthetically powerful, playing baseball in the shadow of the monuments -- in our nation's capital -- is the most proudly American I've ever felt.

And, much like those days of yore, we lost. But at one point during the game, one of my teammates looked over his shoulder at the monument and then back at the field of play, and said, simply, "Wow. This is pretty cool, to be playing baseball here on this spot."

I nodded in agreement, seasoned veteran that I am. "You'll remember this for the rest of your life."

July 19, 2006
Green Team (1-4)
LOSS, 18-7

BATTING: 2-3, 1 double, 3 runs
PITCHING: 5 innings, 12 runs
FIELDING: 6 innings, no errors

First at-bat: hustle double on a line to centerfield, scored
Second at-bat: single through the right side of the infield, scored
Third at-bat: reached on error on a sharply-hit hopper to third base, scored

Not only did I lead off the game, I led off every inning in which I batted. I love batting leadoff, not just because it gets me more at-bats in the game but also because I get to use whatever speed I have. It does make me shorten my swing, though, because I'm just trying to get on base rather than hit the ball over someone's head.

Season-to-Date
BATTING: 65 AB, 44 hits (.677 AVG) 17 doubles, 4 triple, 6 HR (87 Total bases, 1.338 SLG) 36 runs, 31 RBI
PITCHING: 57.2 innings, 152 runs (18.60 RA, per 7 innings; 23.92 RA, per 9)
FIELDING: 82.2 innings, 10 errors

Comments

Crickets

[enchanted-pants.livejournal.com]

I thought I made a funny joke around the fourth inning or so, when one of our players hit a ball right at the shortstop. It suddenly nicked the edge of a manhole cover and took a violent hop away from the fielder, resulting in a single. I said, aloud, "Atta girl! Way to stick it in his man-hole." But nobody laughed.

Re: Crickets

[hbinc.livejournal.com]

Humorless pricks!

Kudos

[jatchwa.livejournal.com]

... on the "hustle double."

Now, I will sing "Do the hustle" to myself for the rest of the weekend.