4.16.6: Meat of Choice

By Joe Monkeyweb
BOX SCORE
LEAGUE LEADERS

Older. Fatter. Slower. That's me.

And so the gang is back again under the lights at Jimmy Walker. Mostly old faces. Good to see everyone.

It could have been a disaster this evening. It's Easter, we don't have a key, no original permit. But the door was open, the field beckoning to us, Come Play With Me! No problem there. Play Ball!

And play ball we did. A pretty tight game given how early it is in the season. The teams were Ham and Brisket. I'm not sure which team I was on, but we lost 13-12. It was a back and forth battle. We took an early 1-0 lead, and then we had one of those innings and they surged to a 5-1 lead. We chipped a way a bit and made it 5-2, which held for a while. Then some more bullshit happened and it was 5-2. Our team was plucky as hell and we marched back to take the lead by a run. Then they went up by one and later stretched it to 10-7, which became 13-8. In a last fit of resistance, we clawed back to 13-12 with 2 out and 10 minutes to go in the bottom of the "ninth," but there we fell short. We just couldn't overcome the fact that they had two professional athletes on their team.

Given the strength of the other team, we probably should have lost by a lot more, but we had heart and spunk. And we cheated only a tiny bit. I can't hit the ball much further than 70 feet in the air. That's depressing. And I am so gotdam slow that I think it may be faster for me to walk to first than to run. Whatever, I am going to make a concerted effort to improve my hitting this year.

Some notes on the field. Overall, it's in decent shape. However, there's still a fucking pit in the batter's box. We need to fix that. Also, the fucking lights are out in Right Field, which makes it exceedingly difficult to see. Also, it's kind of lonely and cold and spooky in Right Field without the lights. I was sad when I was out there. Left Field doesn't smell bad yet.

Speaking of Left Field, I made a pretty rookie mistake this evening when I let a chick try to throw a homerun ball back in to the field. She was sturdy-lookin' and I felt confident that she could do it. So she wound up and threw the ball, and sure enough--clank!--it bounced off the fence and into the garden where we now know a softball tree will not grow. Gas Face to me for that and to the sturdy-lookin' chick with the bad arm.

The game itself was kind of boring to be honest. However, some guys already seem to be in midseason form. Ambrose showed that the new steroid program he is on is working out just fine. He was raking the ball all over and running almost as fast as Dan Russell for most of the night. Justin sent a ball screaming into the night air for a called homer. I actually heard the ball screaming as it left the yard. Jon had a fine game, too. Hveem came wearing baseball pants. When a man shows up wearing baseball pants, you know he is to be taken seriously. And Hveem was such a man tonight. He was throwing the ball all over the damn place, turning DPs and gunning guys out at home. Lex (the Outfield Puma) was in good form in Left.

And then other guys clearly are not there yet. I won't be in midseason form until late next season. Sandals and Kissel both drew the collar. That's a real accomplishment in our league. The baserunning was atrocious, but as bad as it was, there was only one hotbox and a lousy one at that. Clearly, we will need to hone those skills again.

The scorekeeping is pretty funny. I'm not so sure how long it will last, but there were a couple of times when you could see that the official scorer was getting real nervous. It happened to Pete first, when he just couldn't keep up with the multiple errors committed on one horrible play. He looked shaken. Then Ambrose ran into the same problem and told people he needed quiet for a minute while he filled in what the guy did from 2 at bats prior. If it makes people anxious and lends itself to argument, I'm all for it.

No real arguments tonight, although it's a lot of fun to watch Sandals and Ambrose yammer about whether or not "he's callin' it!"

Oh, and there was a heckler. He called me John Kruk. Fucking heckler. He was pretty funny though. And mean. He called a big guy on our team "Balboni." Props to Balboni for ripping a clutch hit in the face of the heckling.

And so it goes. Pretty boring recap, and frankly, a pretty boring game. But boring in a good way. We've been doing this for years now. We know each other and fall right back into the same old silly banter. God bless America and Jimmy Walker Field.