RRBS Softball 2 - Game Log
Game #8

August 19, 2008

Players: Rob Baughman, Kelly Davis, Beth Harsany, Mike Jennings, Andy Lang, Katie Puls, Laurie Silbernagel, Jon Stropes, Jamie Tate, Matt Thompson

After telling everyone for an entire week that our game was going to be played at 7:30, the first part of my Tuesday afternoon was telling everyone how sorry I was that I hadn’t actually looked at the schedule, and that the game was really set for a start time of 8:30.  Though admitting to everyone that I am indeed a dumb ass wasn’t all that pleasant, the fact that we got to play a game that wasn’t at 6:30 was nice. And since everyone had already planned on beginning our warm ups early that day, we decided to keep our meeting time, and just have a nice long practice, especially after the way we played the previous week.

I spend the rest of my afternoon with Andy, working on Redwood, editing it down for what seemed to be the 100 millionth time.  We did some good work, but I don’t think I’ll ever want to sit down and watch that movie again.  Well, except for maybe the scenes I’m in.

When we drove over to the park, it was interesting to see that Andy and I weren’t the first ones there.  Normally it was always Rob, Andy and I to begin every practice, and I was beginning to think of our little trio as the three musketeers… not really for any reason other than I’d had a candy bar earlier that day and I was still thinking about it.  Instead, Rob, Katie and Stropes were already warming up.  Well, Rob and Stropes were warming up… Katie was drinking something out of a green squirt bottle that I later found out to be wine.  I have a feeling it was Franzia Box wine, but she wouldn’t admit to that.

The first thing I did when I walked up was ask Rob how his day at work was, which had become somewhat of a ritual.  Rob said that he didn’t have a good day at work, and in fact, it had been awful, which meant we had bad work Karma on our side that day.

I decided after our last poor outing that we should spend the next hour or so practicing our fielding so we put Stropes at first base, Katie at second, Rob at third and Andy starting hitting while I pitched to him.   This was fun for about the first three hits until we realized Andy was hitting them all into the outfield.  After that, we realigned ourselves so that everyone was in the outfield. 

Soon, we were joined by Laurie and Beth, which helped us fill out our infield.  When Beth took her spot behind the plate, I immediately apologized for the message I had left her on MySpace, telling her how cute I thought the picture of her dog was, only to realize it had recently passed away and that photo was acting as a tribute.  She forgave me, but I still had to make sure that the poor guy had died of old age, and not in some horrific accident.  To my relief, that turned out to be the case.

When Jamie and Mike showed up, we were practicing on all cylinders.  Our hitting was still not up to where we would have liked it, but it was the best our fielding had looked in quite some time.  People were making crisp throws, catching pop flies, and looking good while doing it.  All except for Katie who had taken more of a casual approach to her field, leaning against the fence drinking wine.

All of this was being captured on film by Stropes’ wife Amanda, who had decided to join us and watch our practice.  It was kind of nice to not be on camera duty for once… that way I could just concentrate on my pitching. 

We went on like this for a while until we decided we’d had just about enough practicing and were ready for the real game.  Well, it was that, and the fact that it was getting dark and we could no longer see anything.

For the third week in a row, I listened to the theme song from the Bourne trilogy while driving to help pump me up.  I was feeling good about this game.  This was the best practice we had had in awhile, it wasn’t a 6:30 game so people were more into it than they had been, and it seemed as if everyone was in good spirits. 

That is, until we found out whom we were going to be playing.  Upon arriving to the park, we walked up to field three where we were scheduled to play only find out we were set to play the team that had crushed us back in week 2.  You’d have thought somebody had walked up and sucker punched everyone on my team by the looks on their faces.  Well, everyone but Katie, because one: she wasn’t there back when we’d be shellacked, and two: she was half wasted.

I kept trying to pump the team up saying that it was time for some revenged.  I was genuinely excited about playing this game because I wanted to go out there and stick it to these guys.  My feeling was, the reason we got beat so badly before was because of the whole Kambria drama… but this time, we didn’t have that hanging over our heads.  This time we were feeling good.  This time we’d just come off of a great practice.  There is no way we were going to lose this game that badly… not without a fight at least.  That’s the message I tried to instill in my players.  I wanted to lead them.  I wanted to be the captain they needed at this moment.  I wanted to this to be my “win one for the Gipper” speech.  Turns out, they couldn’t have cared less.

They moped into the dugout and began unpacking their things as Team Hercules across the way began warming up.  The old ump that hates our team was manning the ship again this week, which meant I had to send Andy out there to do the coin flip.  I figured we had a better chance with him doing it than me because not only does the ump hate our team, he really, really hates me.

I told Andy that if by some small miracle we one this toss (which we hadn’t done since week #1) that he should take home.  After getting beat like a drum in the final inning of most of our games, I wanted to finally have the last word on the matter by being the home team.  Andy didn’t look so sure, but I assured him it was the right move.  Not that it was going to matter any way, we always lost the toss.  Except this time.  We won.  We were going to be home.  Hot damn!  We’d had a good practice, it wasn’t a 6:30 game, Rob had a shitty day at work, Beth’s dog hadn’t tied in a tragic accident, Katie was wasted, Mike was hitting well, and we were going to be the home team.  I knew it… fate was smiling down on us today.  We were going to do this thing.

I was happy until I realized we were going to be playing without Kelly because she hadn’t arrived yet.  What?  It was an 8:30 game… how was she not here yet?  This wasn’t good.  And of all times to have to take the field first.  Of course.  But I was still okay.  We’d be able to do this…

So we went out into our positions and attempted to keep a positive attitude.  With Kelly not there yet, we only had three out fielders, which meant Mike had all of left field, Laurie had centerfield, and Rob was covering all of right.  We moved Katie to second base where she had shown a little bit of promise during a few of the practices… in between sips of wine.

At first, it seemed to be going okay.  My pitching was decent, and our field was good enough considering we were a man down.  We got our first out pretty easily when Mike caught a pop fly.  But then, when they finally noticed we were shot a person, the onslaught began.  It started with three straight hits in between second and shortstop.   They were placing balls right between our infielders, and just in front of our out fielders.  There was nothing we could do about it.

This went on through their first 7 batters like that, until we finally saw Kelly walking up.  Laurie and I loudly encouraged her to hurry up the pace a little bit and join us on the field.  Though I didn’t see it, I was later told that we got the finger for our efforts.  Oh well, that was still probably one of the nicer things that happened to me that night.

When Kelly did join us, things didn’t get all that much better.  The only thing that changed was that they started picking on our outfielders more buy sending balls directly down the line into the outfield.  This was both their men and their women.  Well, they were close to being women.

They made it through their entire lineup, and then half way again before we finally got off the field.  The good news was we were only down by 7.  The bad news was, our offense wasn’t going to bail us out.

We started off the same way we ended before, with Stropes fouling out.  This was followed buy Mike getting a hit, and Andy and Laurie walking.  I can say with absolute certainty, that this was the last positive aspect of the game.  The walk was followed buy Beth and Rob hitting pop outs, then just like that, we were back in the field.

I still wasn’t completely down yet.  This inning hand gone as planned, they rarely ever do, but we still had some life.  We were only down by seven.  We could do this.  I was wrong.

Andy and Stropes had lost all signs of life.  Our outfields were getting absolutely destroyed by their all-star batters, Jamie and Kelly had no shot at being able to get to any balls hit in the infield, and the ump calling balls and strikes was doing me absolutely no favors.  In fact, speaking of the Ump, he was obviously playing favorites.  There is a rule in the book that says if you have a player missing (which the other team did) you have to take an out when that person is up to bat.  Well, he never gave them an out.  Twice I brought this up to him, and twice he did nothing about it.  Then when their sub finally did show up, he put himself in a very favorable spot in their lineup, and crushed the ball every time he got up to the plate… which was a lot that night.

The good/bad news was that even going into the second inning, the other team was already tying to hold back so that they wouldn’t mercy rule us too quickly.  They would swing at obvious balls just to make sure they wouldn’t walk, and even if they did walk, the girls decided not to take the extra base because they wanted to hit.  They racked up another five runs on us that inning, and I couldn’t even tell you how we got them out.  When we got back into the dugout and did a quick three and out, I stopped keeping the scorebook.  I put the pen and my camera back in my bag, and just decided to sit back and enjoy the massacre.

By this time, Rob had the idea that he wanted all of us to change positions so that we could all have a little fun doing something different.  None of us cared at this point, so we thought, what the hell, why not.  Andy took over pitching, Mike was shortstop, I moved to first base and Stropes went to the outfield.  Only Rob, who had wanted to play shortstop, didn’t get to move.  The girls didn’t move either… but I think that’s because none of us told them what the hell was going on.

From that point on, I decided it was my job to start mouthing off.  I started saying things like “This is just their tune up for the all-star game.”  And “They have to beat us quickly so that they can get back to Beijing in time for their next game at the Olympics.”  I also told the old lesbian lady (the one that knocked me down at first) that I made out with anyone who took a walk.  And that there was a reason they called me Mr. First Base.

This only made the ump hate me more which was evident by the call he made about me on first base.  When it finally looked like we might be able to score a run, after I walked in inning three (my first at bat) and loaded the bases.  Mike popped a ball into the outfield, which was caught.  Beth then tagged up on third and ran for home.  I tagged up on second and ran for third… at least, everyone but the ump saw me do that.  Instead of giving us one run and having two outs, the Ump said I never tagged up and was out.  And that the run didn’t count because it was considered a force out at second.  Absolute Bull-SHIT!!!!  This was in the same game when he called someone safe at second who was obviously tagged out by our player.  This guy had it out for us, and was enjoying every bit of this loss.

I lost it at that point.  I went nuts, and decided I was going to give this ump shit the entire rest of the game.  No matter what the call was, I yelled, “tag second base” after almost every play.  I was worried about having to deal with him any more after this point.  I knew I was only going to get up to bat maybe one more time, and now that I wasn’t pitching, I didn’t really care what he thought.

Mike added to the humor by later pointing out loudly that “this team is way better than the Hartford.”  They tried to defend themselves by saying “Well, if you think we’re good, you should play Gatsby’s”  To this I said, “well, we’ve played Gatsby’s, and you are no Gatsby’s.”  And they weren’t. These guys were dicks.  From the guy in his fancy baseball pants, to the girl who wore the catcher’s mask at all times, I hated these people, and so did everyone else on our team.

By the end of the game, the scoreboard showed 21-0, and we were forced to quit due to the mercy rule.  Nobody really seemed to mind.  For the first time in my life, I saw members of my team decide not to shake the other team’s hand after the game.  I couldn’t really blame them though.  This was a hose job from the beginning.  Not only were they all ass-holes, they were also way too good to be in a D league, and it didn’t help that they’re all best friends with the ump.

Before everyone left, we decided to have just a bit more fun and walk out to the scoreboard to capture our feat in a photo.  Amanda, our official photographer for the day, joined us to snap our moment of glory.  After that, everyone bailed pretty quickly.  I’m not sure if people stuck around to talk in the parking lot, but I know no one went to BW3’s anyway.  Not that I would have been able to join though, I, for some reason, was asked to stick around and play a game with the next team on that field.  In fact, both Mike and I were asked to stay.

We played on a Men’s C League team and it was one of the most exciting games I’ve ever been a part of.  Not only did I drive in some runs, and make two great hits, I got to play outfield, and actually made a play.  So all in all, I guess it really wasn’t that bad of a night.