To all those dads who sneak out on Sunday to play softball and leave Mom & the kid(s) at home to sort out the bath & the pj's, the DVD player, and the homework, you are hereby absolved for staying home on Mother's Day. However, the single most insidious thing about Mother's Day in my book is it always falls on a Sunday, which means it always packs a punch in terms of its high guilt factor and its rampant commercialism. But I might as well be telling you the Sun sets in the West; you already know and there's not much you can do about it.
If you had planned to play and decided against it because some weatherman told you it was going to rain, I want to give some friendly advice: Don't listen to the weatherman on TV, please. Those guys are instructed by their bosses to hype 'weather events' because they are in a constant fight for ratings. They are always going to err on the side of predicting bad weather, and that's what they did yesterday. This isn't a myth; it's a true fact about the news business and god knows I know it firsthand. You just can't trust the weatherman with a key decision like that; not only is he generally kind of dumb, but he's also not acting in your best interests. Instead, I recommend going on the computer and checking out Accuweather and clicking on the 'local radar' page. This page never fails to give you reliable information on whether it will rain in the next few hours; one time using Accuweather animated radar I predicted the arrival of a summer thundershower within five minutes of its arrival and departure. The weatherman is fine for getting comme ci comme ca forecasts for a few days out, but when it gets down to the nitty gritty, you want to go with the Internet.
Softball had these two strong factors working against it Sunday. And the turnout suffered. In the end, we had seven players: myself, Ambrose, Lex, Hans, Evan, Adam and Danny. Adam was depressed because his beloved Red Sox haven't played a game in like weeks but he brought me the news that the Os came back in the 9th to sweep the lowly Royals. Julian showed up for about 15 minutes but left when it became clear there would be no game. I myself went through a not insignificant amount of trouble to rearrange my sked and show up which makes me either a) a statistical outlier or b) an asshole depending on whether you are into science or not.
What emerged was an extendo batting practice with lots of beer drinking. Thanks again to Hans who brought a six-pack. I generally bring one beer in hopes of just catching a tiny little beer high. But of course I rarely say no to a second if there's another around. I would add that this behavior from Hans is not limited to beer; Hans is one of the world's truly generous people.
During the BP session Danny perfected his behind-the-back catching technique.
There was a hot rumor on the diamond that actress Julia Stiles was in the little park area behind center field. I believe it was confirmed at some point to be accurate. I had to really stress to Ms. Stiles a few years back that she should no longer call my cell phone late at night so I kind of stayed away from that little sideplay.
After an embarrassingly long BP session we hastily arranged a game of 'every man for himself' with six guys in the field, a pitcher throwing overhand, and no catcher. The batter received ghost runners for hits and they advanced as far as he did on subsequent hits. We staggered through two rounds of this and everybody seemed to be enjoying the outright idiocy of it all to a fair extent. The overhand pitching added a tiny element of danger and mystique to what surely would have been a failed attempt to get something lively going at all. It was hard to score runs off the overhand pitching and there was no incentive to take pitches because, with no catcher, the batter had to retrieve the ball. Also, there was a brisk wind pouring in from the power alley in left, which would have made 'called shots' during a regular game a real challenge. This was no July night where the ball jumps off the bat. Ambrose hit the only ball out while batting leftamundo. There were more trick catches and stuff like that; Hans was seen working on his 'glove on head, catch fly ball with bare hand' trick.
At least one bladder was relieved in right field.
After the 'game' we proclaimed ourselves winners and headed into the dark night a little shook by the bad turnout but confident that a moral victory of sorts was achieved in that we hung out and did something, anything long enough to hamper the French speaking soccer players from running wild on the field of play.
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