Today was the last softball game of the inaugural season for the House of Slack softball team. In proper style, we managed to lose this one spectacularly as well, though at least we showed some flashes of brilliance, and even had one or two 1-2-3 innings (on defense, not on offense). Because our stellar record was a hefty zero wins against a mere six losses, we did not progress to the playoffs. My goal in the offseason is to strengthen up my arm so I can throw harder than Johnny Damon.
I wore a Phillies cap to softball today. Hilarity ensued... kind of.
The Curse of The Bobbino
A short play in two acts
Act One, Scene One
Deanna approaches the plate for her first at-bat of the day.
Catcher: Oh, are you from Philly?
Deanna: Yeah. Are you?
Catcher: Yeah... I'm from Chester.
Deanna: Oh cool! I grew up in Northeast Philly.
Catcher: Ha, we're about the same then, huh?
Deanna hits the ball, but pops out to short.
Act One, Scene Two
Deanna approaches the plate for her second at-bat.
Deanna: So, are you a Phillies fan too?
Catcher: Yeah. Except that they always suck and always get rid of anyone who's good.
Deanna: Today is NOT the day to get me started on that.
Deanna watches four balls go by, and walks.
Act One, Scene Three
Deanna gets to second on the next play. The opposing shortstop is wearing a Mets hat.
Shortstop: Hahahaha, Phillies fan?
Deanna: Yeah, yeah.
Shortstop: I can't believe that Abreu trade. What a bunch of schmucks.
Deanna: And to the Yankees no less.
Shortstop: Uggggghhh.
Act One, Scene Four
Opposing shortstop is on second base, and Deanna's playing second, as there's a brief time-out.
Deanna: So, the Mets, eh? Do you think they'll really trade Milledge for Zito or whatever?
Shortstop: God, that'd be awesome, wouldn't it? I mean, they really just need another great starter to push them to the pennant...
Deanna: Yeah, it's not like they don't already have Pedro and Glavine and...
Shortstop: ...or like they didn't just lose a tough lefty opponent in their division...
Deanna: Ha ha. You're very funny.
Ball is hit, shortstop runs off.
Act Two, Scene One
Deanna is now playing in her second game of the day, subbing in on the Grand Salami team.
Jon Wells: You're up to bat next, Deanna.
Deanna: Okay... [gets bat, starts walking off]
Jon: Go up there and do a Bobby Abreu impression!
Deanna: I guess, I'm a lefty...
Jon: Be like Tomas Perez!
Deanna: WHAT?
Jon: He's with Tampa Bay now and just hit four doubles in a game against the Yankees!
Deanna: Uhh, okay...
Jon: Be like Kevin Stocker!
Deanna: He's not even left-handed!
Deanna hits a hard grounder towards third, hustles it out, but is thrown out at first.
Deanna: Well, that WAS a pretty good Kevin Stocker imitation, you have to admit.
Act Two, Scene Two
Jon Wells has just gotten himself ejected from the game for arguing a call, and the Grand Salami team has to forfeit the game.
GS Teammate: Uhhh, I didn't even know you could GET ejected from a softball game.
Deanna: This is all my fault. This hat is cursed. Goddamn Pat Gillick.
Deanna takes off the Phillies hat. It immediately starts raining.
THE END
The sad part is, that's pretty much exactly how things went today. I did get about ninety comments of "Phillies, huh? How about that Abreu trade?" from various people. I saw Jon Wells (the editor of the Grand Salami Mariners magazine, who had a team in the same softball league) and complimented him on his stirrups, and he asked if I could sub in for them for their game since one of their female players wasn't able to make it. So after my team's game was done, I ended up subbing in for a second game. I did enjoy playing with the Grand Salami team; they were definitely the nicest people of any of the teams I've subbed with, and very good players in general. Also, I got to try being catcher, which was fun after playing second base for the rest of the season.
I'm really not making up that part about Jon getting ejected from the game, either. It was a weird play, where he was running to home plate, and their catcher was blocking the plate, but the throw home was pretty much right there, and Jon went barrelling into the catcher, knocking her over and knocking the ball away. He was called out; a big argument ensued, and BOOM, the umpire ejected him and called the game a forfeit. Craziness.
Anyway, in the evening, I got to see Derek, Jason, and Jeff from USSM on the "Q It Up Sports" show on Q13, which was a real treat. PositivePaul posted videos of it in the comments on the show-watching thread, if you didn't catch it. Derek and Jeff even wore ties, and looked very spiffy. No, Derek wore a suit, he didn't wear a Doyle jersey with a tie. Jeff stole the show as usual, and Jason had to be prodded to talk. It was just like a pizza feed!
Showing posts with label Softball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Softball. Show all posts
Monday, July 31, 2006
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Baseball is hard
"Baseball's a game. Games are supposed to be fun."
-- Tom Selleck, in Mr. Baseball
I went to the batting cages again last night to work on my swing for softball. Between playing softball out in the WHOPPING 85 DEGREE WEATHER on Sunday for an hour and a half, and working on my swing last night until my arms were ready to fall off, I really get a better appreciation for what ballplayers go through.
It's really easy to criticize them, to say they suck when they don't make a play, or if they strike out, or whatever. And quite frankly, some of them are getting paid more money per plate appearance than I'll make in a year. But still. Sometimes it's really hard to keep it in perspective that even if someone like Mark Teahen, All-Star sucks compared to many other major leaguers, he's still in the top .000001% of the baseball players in the world, just by way of being in the Major Leagues.
I had a really lousy day playing the field on Sunday. It was hot, the sun was shining in our faces. The other team was much better than us; we knew we were the proverbial Royals to their Yankees. And for whatever reason, I couldn't seem to get to grounders in time. It sucked. And worse, I couldn't get my mind out of it. I didn't catch a pop fly because I misjudged it by a few feet and couldn't readjust in time, so I was still mentally kicking myself a minute later when a grounder was hit about ten feet to my left, and I didn't get a good jump on it and it went through. Eventually, I know I was thinking things like "Hey, if they only get two more runs, this inning will end," and such.
Baseball is hard.
My right wrist has a bruise on it because I'm doing something wonky with the follow-through in my swing, and after 150 swings or so, it didn't want to deal with me anymore. Being as I like having control of the fingers on my right hand, I decided to listen to my wrist.
However, I started really getting the timing down of that damn pitching machine after a while. I started pulling the ball well, hitting it far into the netting behind the machines. I'd step into my swing more, swing harder, give myself some more bat speed, stop meekly hitting grounders back to the middle. I loved hearing the thwack of metal on softball as I got some really good contact.
Baseball is fun.
The other day, I was sitting there at work refreshing box scores, waiting for certain game lineups to show up so I'd know who was playing and who wasn't, so I could throw them into the lineup that day on my fantasy team. I decided to take a risk and put in Ryan Freel as my 2B and sit out Tadahito Iguchi, despite that Iguchi was facing lefty Andy Pettitte and Freel was racing righty Jake Westbrook. Iguchi went 0-for-3 with a walk, and Freel went 5-for-5 and scored two runs. Was I brilliant? No, just lucky. A few days later Iguchi got me 2 home runs and 7 RBI in one game, which is actually the new single-game RBI record for a Japanese player in the MLB. And that was even luckier.
Figuring out how baseball players are going to perform is complex.
I realize that softball is not baseball, that I am not an athlete, that managing a fantasy baseball team is nothing like managing or general managing a real team. I know that I don't work on my programming projects at work to the cheers of 40,000 people, and if I screw something up, I only have to face my boss; I'm not going to have to deal with a full stadium shouting, "YOUR CODE SUCKS, DEANNA, GET OFF THE KEYBOARD!"
I guess my point is, despite that I know it's not going to stop me from shouting things like "YOU SUCK, EDDIE!", I've been trying to take a different tack on the game this year, both in writing and in playing, and it's been a lot of fun and really educational. There's a fine balance between how far you can submerge yourself into the game mentally before you start thinking of the players running around like little random-number-generating automata. I wanted to take a step back and put some things into perspective for myself, and I figured I'd let you all in on what I was thinking.
-- Tom Selleck, in Mr. Baseball
I went to the batting cages again last night to work on my swing for softball. Between playing softball out in the WHOPPING 85 DEGREE WEATHER on Sunday for an hour and a half, and working on my swing last night until my arms were ready to fall off, I really get a better appreciation for what ballplayers go through.
It's really easy to criticize them, to say they suck when they don't make a play, or if they strike out, or whatever. And quite frankly, some of them are getting paid more money per plate appearance than I'll make in a year. But still. Sometimes it's really hard to keep it in perspective that even if someone like Mark Teahen, All-Star sucks compared to many other major leaguers, he's still in the top .000001% of the baseball players in the world, just by way of being in the Major Leagues.
I had a really lousy day playing the field on Sunday. It was hot, the sun was shining in our faces. The other team was much better than us; we knew we were the proverbial Royals to their Yankees. And for whatever reason, I couldn't seem to get to grounders in time. It sucked. And worse, I couldn't get my mind out of it. I didn't catch a pop fly because I misjudged it by a few feet and couldn't readjust in time, so I was still mentally kicking myself a minute later when a grounder was hit about ten feet to my left, and I didn't get a good jump on it and it went through. Eventually, I know I was thinking things like "Hey, if they only get two more runs, this inning will end," and such.
Baseball is hard.
My right wrist has a bruise on it because I'm doing something wonky with the follow-through in my swing, and after 150 swings or so, it didn't want to deal with me anymore. Being as I like having control of the fingers on my right hand, I decided to listen to my wrist.
However, I started really getting the timing down of that damn pitching machine after a while. I started pulling the ball well, hitting it far into the netting behind the machines. I'd step into my swing more, swing harder, give myself some more bat speed, stop meekly hitting grounders back to the middle. I loved hearing the thwack of metal on softball as I got some really good contact.
Baseball is fun.
The other day, I was sitting there at work refreshing box scores, waiting for certain game lineups to show up so I'd know who was playing and who wasn't, so I could throw them into the lineup that day on my fantasy team. I decided to take a risk and put in Ryan Freel as my 2B and sit out Tadahito Iguchi, despite that Iguchi was facing lefty Andy Pettitte and Freel was racing righty Jake Westbrook. Iguchi went 0-for-3 with a walk, and Freel went 5-for-5 and scored two runs. Was I brilliant? No, just lucky. A few days later Iguchi got me 2 home runs and 7 RBI in one game, which is actually the new single-game RBI record for a Japanese player in the MLB. And that was even luckier.
Figuring out how baseball players are going to perform is complex.
I realize that softball is not baseball, that I am not an athlete, that managing a fantasy baseball team is nothing like managing or general managing a real team. I know that I don't work on my programming projects at work to the cheers of 40,000 people, and if I screw something up, I only have to face my boss; I'm not going to have to deal with a full stadium shouting, "YOUR CODE SUCKS, DEANNA, GET OFF THE KEYBOARD!"
I guess my point is, despite that I know it's not going to stop me from shouting things like "YOU SUCK, EDDIE!", I've been trying to take a different tack on the game this year, both in writing and in playing, and it's been a lot of fun and really educational. There's a fine balance between how far you can submerge yourself into the game mentally before you start thinking of the players running around like little random-number-generating automata. I wanted to take a step back and put some things into perspective for myself, and I figured I'd let you all in on what I was thinking.
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