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RRBS Softball 2 - Game Log June 24, 2008 Players: Rob Baughman, Kambria Current, Kelly Davis, Beth Harsany, Mike Jennings, Andy Lang, Jon Stropes, Laurie Silbernagul, Jamie Tate, Matt Thompson It had been 45 weeks since I’d last gotten up in the morning looking forward to playing a softball game, but the feeling I had that morning was unmistakable. It was a mix of fear, anxiety, excitement, nausea and exhaustion all wrapped into one. However, I can’t claim that all of those emotions were due to softball as I typically wake up every Tuesday with at least some of those symptoms. As is typically the case, I’d waited until the last minute to do most of the things I needed to do until gameday, but fortunately we weren’t playing until 9:30. That meant I still had time to go buy new shirts/jerseys for the teams, find one more girl for the squad tonight, organize a time for practice, and get over to continue editing Joe Redwood. Editor’s note: Yes, I know last year I began the season saying that I was going over to Andy’s to edit Joe Redwood, but things have changed a bit. The movie has come out on DVD and was picked up by a distributor, but that distributor wants the movie trimmed down to 95 minutes, which means it’s back to the editing room. I’m guessing next season, we’ll be working on a director’s cut or something because it’s not a beginning to a softball season unless editing of Joe Redwood is involved. Now back to the story. After bailing early from work, I went over to Wal-Mart where I debated for a good half-hour on what color we should wear this season. Red hadn’t done us much good before, and half the team hated their shirts, so a changed needed to be made. I thought something bold like Yellow or Orange, but I knew I’d be hated forever for that. Mike had suggested Purple during our last practice, but once the alcohol wore off, he knew it was a bad idea. He later texted me, and said he regretted ever mentioning it. Since I was obviously incapable of making this decision on my own, I turned to Stropes and Andy to make the call. I wrote to both of them “What color shirt should I get?” Stropes, thinking I was just asking him for wardrobe advice wrote back “Fag.” Andy on the other hand, having at least a bit of common sense, called me to give some helpful advice. I ran down the colors that were available and he said he wanted to do charcoal gray because it was different and intimidating. When I finally talked to Jon, he said he wanted blue, because it was like the Cubs. I called Andy back with this information, and he said, “Fuck that, I’m not going to listen to ‘we’re like the cubs, we’re the cubs’ all season long. Get gray.” Turns out they were out of normal sizes of gray shirts, instead insisting on carrying only XXXL and XXXXL sizes. So blue it was. We were going to be the Cubs. Shit.
That’s about the time I got a text from Beth telling me that she could in fact be our substitute girl for the game. She’d never played softball with us before, but having seen her skills on the dodgeball and kickball field, I knew she was a gamer. I also knew I could depend on her to actually show up and not skip out at the last minute like some subs (and actually team members in the past). I explained to her how to get to Andy’s house via text message (which is no easy feat), and said that practice and shirt/team building was going to begin at 8PM. With that, I was on my way home to decorate my shirt… soon to be jersey.
I then jumped in the car, cranked up the radio, and headed over to Andy’s house to begin some pre-game editing. Upon arriving to his house, the first thing I had to do was explain why I was holding a bag full of Cubs colored jerseys when we had both clearly decided on charcoal gray. Even after my concise explanation, he still wasn’t happy, and proceeded to tell me what he thought of the decision. That quickly evolved into us talking about Fantasy Football, and then into him coming around on the color, and trying to decide what number he wanted to be. To make a long story short, we never got around to editing. When Andy and I went into the other room to start doctoring up his jersey, I decided to let his dog Diesel out into the back yard because he kept begging me to. The dog, not Andy. I then let him right back in because he had decided it was too hot. I only mention this because at that exact moment our first baseman, and legendary big glove carrier, Jon Stropes entered the room and promptly let the dog out the front door of the house. Mistake #1. Andy told Jon not to worry about it because it’s impossible to catch Diesel once he’s taken off, and he always manages to find his way back anyway. Jon, shrugged it off, and grabbed a Jersey of his own. Oh, and he was more than delighted to point out that these blue jerseys looked a lot like the Cubs. Andy shot me an angry stare.
He apologized by telling Andy that he had no idea it was going to do that. I replied, “Of course you didn’t know it was going to do that, if you did, then you’d really be a dick.” Before Jon was able to punch me, we were joined by Beth, and then Rob. Stropes was let off the hook a few minutes later when Rob did the exact same thing that Stropes had done. Once again, Andy was trying to clean off permanent marker off of a counter top with some sort of carpet cleaning concoction. Yeah, it didn’t make sense to me either. Before long, our new team member Laurie had arrived, and we were all gearing up for the big game. Andy Had decided to go with the number 3 because it was the number of knee surgeries he’s had (to this point). That’s also where the nickname “Big Limpin’” came from. Laurie went with a hybrid of her last name, which I was unable to pronounce. However, I did discover that it’s not Silverknuckle, which she didn’t like in the least. With everyone else running late, we decided to pack up our gear and head to the practice field. At least three of the cars pulling into the practice diamonds were blaring Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing, our official theme song from last season. After going 0-10, it was a little harder to not stop believing, but we were going to give it a try anyway.
While everyone else tossed the ball around, I was busy making trips back and fourth to my car because I couldn’t seem to remember to bring more than one thing at a time. First the balls, then the bats, then the score card, then my wallet so I could collect money, then my cleats, then remember that my cleats were in my bag which I’d already taken to the dugout. By the time I was ready to practice, Jon was already taking pitches from Mike, and trying to hit the ball out of a tee-ball field left handed. I didn’t want to practice pitching because I was still not sure what the actual distance was supposed to be. I knew it wasn’t the 37 feet available to me on the kiddy diamond, so I instead chose to practice stopping grounders with Rob. After almost taking one in the nuts, I decided to trot back to my car and insert my cup.
By the time I’d gotten back, we were ready to head out. All seemed good other than we were still a girl short because Laurie’s friend Kelly had still not called or shown up. Uh oh, here we go again. We arrived at the ballpark in our usual fashion, me trailing everyone else because it takes me so long to get everything organized in my car. Luckily Kambria reminded me not to forget my ball tote (which she enjoys calling a man-bag or purse) before I left; otherwise I’d have been without balls for a while. We got there, and everyone proceeded to walk into the diamond, carrying very little. I on the other hand looked like a mother trying to lug around stuff for 10 kids, a fact Jamie pointed out on the way in. Only Beth offered to help me with the load, all the others took too much joy in watching me struggle. Mike looked snappy with his rolling bat bag. Stropes turned and asked him when his flight was leaving. I think everyone got a nice chuckle out of that except for Mike.
Stropes and I counted off the 53ft distance that I would be pitching from, and I started unleashing my new pitching style. I was on it, and looking good doing it. This was the most comfortable I’d felt pitching ever, which was remarkable because I really hadn’t practiced all that much. After about 10 good ones in a row, I called it quits because I didn’t want to do something stupid and throw myself off. By the time we’d gotten back, there were still no girls on the IMCU team, and now I was joining Jon in being worried. I asked one of the guys if he knew this was a coed league, and you’d have thought I’d punched him in the nuts. He was now having the same reaction that we’d been having the previous 15 minutes. Well, he wasted no time in trotting off to talk to the league manager, and Jon and I quickly followed. When we got to the main man’s office, he thought we were going to be paying him. Not so fast I said, as I made sure my credit card was nowhere near his hand. Why are we scheduled to be playing a men’s team when we are clearing coed, I asked. He asked if we were sure that we were in a coed league. I pointed to my sheet that said coed and nodded. He then asked the other guy if he was sure he’d signed up for a men’s league. That guy held up his paper that said Men’s League and nodded. Now the main man looked worried. He quickly picked up his phone and called some other guy that is supposed to know what the hell is going on. After explaining the situation to the man on the other line, our guy hung up the phone and looked at us. “Well, he said what happened was he put a men’s league team and a coed team in the same division.” Wow, that clears everything up, good thing you made that call! Jon, not one to beat around the bush, asked him what this all meant. The man said to give him a few minutes and he’d figure something out.
Turns out, the man was able to fix everything because in our division there was another men’s team, and another coed team scheduled to play one another. They just switched the schedule around, and we finally had our opponent. The Hartford. We were moved to field #6 way in the back, in the dark for our game. Which was fine, the less people watching us play the better. By that time, Kelly had shown up so we now had our full squad. Looking across the way, the Hartford also had a full team, and then some. They had to have had 20 people over there of all ages, races and genders. Then I saw something that concerned me even more… the umpire. If you’ve read these game logs before, you know the troubles that we often have with the umps at the games. Well, this time we were faced with a familiar foe… the bald pervert. He’s the guy who flirted with every single girl on our team while they were up to bad, and was asking them out, and then when they’d turn down his advances, he would try and strike them out. Yeah, it was this guy again. I tried to hold in my contempt for him as I walked up to the plate to get instructions from him. He started off by saying that we were unlucky to be getting the worst ump out here. I couldn’t have agreed more. I started to pay less attention to what he was saying and focused harder on hoping he wouldn’t remember our team. We were lucky in that we only had two girls on our team from the previous year, and I doubted he was going to remember my face. He then told us that his big rule was profanity, and that if he heard a GD or F bomb during the game, we were going to be ejected. And if he heard one, but didn’t know who said it, the captain would be tossed. I almost knew for a fact that Stropes was going to get me tossed from this game. We flipped a coin for sides and of course, the Hartford won. They smartly chose to be home, which meant we were up to bat first. Andy reclaimed his position as lead off man, but surprised everyone when he actually swung at a ball. He was followed by Jamie, Mike, Stropes and Kambria, all of which did well up there, earning us a one run lead in the process.
Nobody was shocked when my first couple of practice pitches fell either way short, or way long of the plate. I could feel the tension behind me, but unlike last year, I didn’t panic. I knew I was going to be able to do this. And I did. They sent four batters up, and we sent three of them away with outs. We were in the lead after one inning and it felt good to be back. During the next inning, I started taking my customary pictures while Jon found something else to do, bitch about the smell coming from the port o lets near our dugout. Yes, they did really stink, but he was the only one that felt like complaining about it out loud. Mike was out coaching first as usual, and our crowd of Stacy and Kambria’s new guy friend were cheering us on… silently. We ended up scoring two more runs that inning thanks to Kelly and Laurie and Rob’s hitting. Beth and I soon discovered that their pitcher was a machine, and nothing was going to get by this guy. Back out in the field, my pitching continued to stun everyone (most notably the other team) and Andy was a super-hero at short stop. The dude was everywhere. They maybe got one person on base, but for the most part, we shut them down. All the while, Stropes continued to discuss the stinky toilets with the other teams first base coach. The only missteps during the game were when I dropped a ball that was hit to me, but was still able to get it to first in time because the woman who had hit the ball had to weigh 300lbs, and moved about as fast as a guy walking to the electric chair. There was also the time Andy yelled for me to make a play at first, and when I went to do so, nobody was on the base. So I through to where I thought second was, and it went rolling out into center field. But, where that would have typically cost us runs, and put us in a funk, this year it didn’t. We’d make a mistake, and then pick things up a notch. We were a machine out there, a well-oiled fielding and out making machine! And everyone was getting in on the action. Rob caught a few fly balls, Kelly and Laurie made throws from the field, Jamie was her usual dependable self, Kambria made some stops, Stropes was all over first, and I even made a few plays covering first when Stropes was out of position. And then there was Beth, who did the best job at pitcher I had ever seen… and most of that happened before the pitch was even thrown. Sure, she made a few outs by catching the ball on a pop fly, but her real talent was taunting the opposing batters as they tried to concentrate, and then flirting with the ump between pitches. It was a beautiful thing to watch.
We had gotten to the seventh and final inning with an 8-0 lead. I had so far pitched a shut out, and they had one more at bat left. Now here’s what worried me. All last season, we had a problem with getting leads and an even bigger problem holding on to leads because we always had one bad inning a game that destroyed us. We’d give up runs, make stupid mistakes, bad throws etc. and then let the other team get momentum and beat us. To this point in this game, we had not had that inning yet. All the signs were pointing to the seventh and final inning ending up that way. It had begun with us going three and out while up to bat, and now all we had to do was get three more outs without letting them score 8 runs. We took the field for what we hopped would be the last time, and I once again walked out to the mound. I still hadn’t walked anyone yet, and I didn’t want to start doing it now. But something strange was happening. I wasn’t nervous. Everytime it looked like we were going to win a game last year, I began to panic. Not this time. I was strangely calm. Then one of their big guns walked up to the plate, and immediately cranked one past me and over Kambria’s head. He rounded first and made it all the way to second. Uh-oh. The next batter up was a girl who ended up dribbling the ball to me, so I was able to throw her our at first, and keeping the runner at second. Then came their big hitter. This was a guy who’d put it into left field every time he was up, and this time was no different. He crushed the ball out to left center and it looked like it was going to go over Rob’s head. Here it comes I thought to myself. This is the beginning of the end. The ball was going to go over Rob’s head, they would score two runs, and our spirit would be crushed.
We’d won! RRBS Softball had finally won a game. And not just any game… our first game, and it was a shut out. Before the season had begun, Mike and I had talked about how we were going to win at least one game this year, and just like that, our prediction came true. I immediately rushed over to Stropes and gave him a big hug. We were soon joined by the rest of the team. Jon tried several times to pick Andy up and carry him off the field, but Andy reminded him that picking up a guy with three knee surgeries to his name isn’t the best of ideas. We then settled down enough to walk over and congratulate the other team on a good game. I’d never gone through this ritual before after winning a game, and let me tell you, it’s a hell of a lot different. We then ran back to the dugout, and made sure everyone stuck around for a team photo. Stacy grabbed mine and Mike’s cameras and snapped the first team photo we’d ever had where we didn’t have to force the smiles after a devastating loss. Together we all walked out of the ballpark, still glowing, and knowing that we could bask in this feeling for another two weeks because there wasn’t going to be a game until after the fourth of July. Would we win again, nobody knew, but at that moment, we really didn’t care. We were 10 individuals celebrating together on a warm summer night at close to 11PM, and there was nowhere else we would have rather been. Jon had asked Mike on the way out if this victory ranked among the sweetest he’d ever been a part of, and he said Hell yes it was. He said that you can only get punched in the face so many time before you’re finally able to land one back. And tonight was our night. Everyone else had gone except for me and Stropes who looked to be the last two people in the parking lot. He hugged one last time, and just kept repeating how un-freakin’-believable it was to win. I then told him that I was thinking we needed to find a new theme song for the team because we no longer had to “keep believing,” because from now on we’d be able to “keep knowing.” |
Once the color was decided upon, I needed to find out what size everyone was. I thought I could probably guess, but last year that got me into trouble with the girls, so I figured I’d be smarter this year and ask. Everyone told me except for Jamie who told me to use my best judgment. Now I was in a pickle. Do I go small, and have it not fit, or do I go medium, and have her wonder why I think she’s so big? Our motto has always been go big or go home, so I chose the medium. Well, that’s what I told her. In actuality, it’s because that was the one I already had in my hand.
With a few hours to go until the beginning of RRBS Softball v2.0, I pulled out my ever-dependable sharpie and got to work on my shirt. I choose to switch to the #8 this year as 8 as become my lucky number. It’s also a number of prosperity, and as it turns out, it also is the most flattering to my figure. I went with a black number on the shirt to further distance ourselves from looking anything like the Cubs, and then added a classy silver drop shadow. Then, for the finishing touch, I gave it the patented Thompson sleeve removal treatment, cutting off both sleeves and turning it into a lean, mean, pitching machine. Often times I’m asked why I do this to all of my sports shirts, and I always have the same reply. When you have moneymakers like mine, you don’t dare cover them up with sleeves. How else would people know who to follow to the guns show?
Now, when dealing with permanent markers on any type of surface, it’s customary to place something underneath what you’re drawing on to make sure that the maker doesn’t bleed through. I thought this was a universally known fact, but as it turns out, Jon had never received that memo. We found this out when after writing “El Stropo” on the back of his shirt, we found that he’d also written it on Andy’s counter top. Mistake #2
We weren’t able to use our normal practice field because some other douchebags were on it, and we couldn’t use our secondary field because of some kids practicing. So we took the smaller third field and began tossing the balls around. Mike soon pulled in, followed by Jamie. Kambria was already at the field practicing pitching with her little sister.
Not wanting to put on a show for the little kids, I took my cup to the port-o-let across the way. It’s too bad that I choose that particular time to do this because I missed Andy getting hit by a ball after it jumped the grass and almost took him out. Damn the luck.
We got to field four which was one we knew all too well from the previous year. It was here we played our final heart breaking game and got our 10th and final loss of the season. Upon arriving, we noticed something odd. The other team standing around not playing consisted of all men. Not a woman among them. And I wasn’t surprised because they all looked like ladies men, because they didn’t, I was more shocked by the fact that it was supposed to be a coed team. Trying not to worry, like Stropes was audibly doing, I suggested that he and I go over to one of the cages so I could practice my pitching. With about a half hour to go before game time, I knew they’d have it figured out by then.
So we walked back out and tried to use this guys logic on our teammates. It wasn’t working as they actually expected real answers and we had none. Finally, over the load speaker, we hear the main man call IMCU to field #2. We then hear him call us to his office. Now I was worried because I thought he’d be telling us to go home and he’d find another night for us to play. Actually, I was less worried about than I was that Stropes was going to beat this guy to death with his baseball bat.
Now it was our turn out in the field. Most everyone from last year took their usual spots. Stropes on first, Kambria at second, Andy at short, Jamie at third, Mike in left. Rob took over right center, Beth was the new pitcher, Kelly was left field and Laurie was right. Now we were all set.
Our batting wasn’t too shabby either. Andy, Mike and Stropes hit in the park homeruns, we had some great baserunning, and our girls were doing phenomenal, making contact and advancing runners. Both Jamie and Kambria had a few RBI’s each. My only appearance on base came when Mike needed a designated runner after her hurt his ankle. I have to say, my base running skills were still fantastic though, I haven’t lost a step yet. I managed to score a run too when Stropes hit a triple and got me in.
But no! Wait a minute! Rob caught it. He jumped and caught the ball. That was the second out. We were now only one out away from winning our first game ever. Silent we all cheered to ourselves, knowing how close we were to tasting victory for the first time. Nobody but Beth said a word as the final batter walked up. The girl who came to the plate hadn’t hit a thing all night, and had actually struck out once already. Beth, not having lived through our disappointing seasons in the past, let me know that she was not a good hitter, and we only needed one more out. Now I was nervous. I threw the ball toward the plate, and it was going to be way, way short…. But she swung! We were no only one strike away. Beth threw me the ball, and I could feel the heat from my teammates staring into my back as I tossed the final pitched. She swung and missed again, and just like that the game was over!
