Another comeback win for E-league softball powerhouse Il Veleno with a healthy dose of schaudenfreude taboot. The quick story is that the other team's catcher was a shaved head psycho intense dude who was pretty obnoxious all game long - screaming in his player's faces, yelling at people left and right no matter what - and he seriously irked everyone on our team. The capsule example happened in the top of the 6th - we were up 5-2, and their team started a rally to tie the game. With a runner on 1st and 2nd, shaved head catcher dude draws a walk, turns around and yells something in the general direction of our bench, and *dances* down the first base line and on to second. Seriously, spin-arama Barry Bonds-style after an E-league Softball BASE ON BALLS.
So much wrong with this level of intense ridiculousness. The obvious: it's E-league, and no one should be even approaching the volume of amped up silliness this guy displayed. It's co-ed. You drew a *WALK.* A SLO-PITCH WALK. This is not impressive, my man. And behind all of this is that you are PLAYING CATCHER in a co-ed game, and I'm sorry, but in every co-ed softball game I've played, you reserve catcher spot for the woman who hasn't played very much softball in her life so she doesn't hurt you in the field. This is chump city, and the antics only draw attention to the fact that you are a breathing absurdity.
FTR, I did give the guy a Seth Meyers-worthy "Really?" when he got to second base after the walk. Pretty politely, actually, but it was very much a nice version of "could you please CTFO?" He replied "Someone was talking shit," as though this qualified everything and made dancing down the first baseline a reasonable act.
So we got out of that inning down 7-5, and there were some very miffed Il Velenos on the bench as we faced our last at-bats. I was up 3rd in the inning, behind Andrew and Sara - Andrew drilled a single, Sara grounded out to short. One on, one out, and I walked up to the plate, still incredulous at spazmo-the-wonderdork's antics, and just decided, "I'm going to tie this game now." The thought did run through my head, I promise; I didn't point out to the bleachers a la Ruth or anything, but I did so mentally. First pitch a tad inside, I turned on it, and another shot landed on the sidewalk behind the centerfield fence - another non-cheapy Mao Tse Dong for the Nyet. Yeah! Game-tied! And no dancing around the basepaths, either. (In his defense, shaven crazy guy was quite gracious after the game - actually the whole team was, and I even got high fives from the other team's 2nd, ss and 3b as I *ran* around the bases. Very nice friendly vibe from the vast majority of their team; funny how the atmosphere can be charged by one player (he said knowing the fully self-reflective implications of the comment).
Tres exciting, and we came back to win it in extra-innings (where, incidentally, they invokved some Commie-non-baseball rule where you start the inning with a runner on second. Silliness!). Beck also had a great game - hit the ball hard every time, got on base 2 of 3 times, and knocked in an important run. TBN in the house!
And all of this witnessed by the iPJ / iPMM, who are in town in slots 4 and 5 of Houseguestapalooza. Full on write-up of all relative-related antics in the offing, of course, so get ready for that. ALWAYS fun, though, to hit homeruns for the fanbase. Meghan/Greg, you missed out!
Post-note: Also played Ultimate yesterday, and quad is sore but not impeding me at all. Good!
Post-note 2: Played left and SS last night, and on one play at SS, I charged a slow roller, back handed it and side-arm whipped it to first, full on Nomah in his prime style... only to have our firstbasedude drop it. I mean, chest-level throw, just dropped. This would have been the third out and ended the game with us up 5-3. So his drop permitted the later heroics, so whatever, we'll take it, but it was weird - on the next grounder, I turned to fire but was so worried about him dropping it that I short-armed it a bit - wide of the bag, not terrible and definitely within reach, but dude just watched it sail by, didn't even take a stab at it. This is not to criticize dude, just to realize that softball / baseball catching is not an easy thing to do, and I continuously forget that I've got baseball camps etc. in my head that just make things like not stretching over to catch a throw completely alien to me. Hard to know what to do about this, because with people flying down the basepath - both runners were fast - it's not like I can just lob it over there. Ah, well.
Post note 3, confessional style: I had a bad act at pickup yesterday. Lazy forehand huck goes up, I run over to grab it, jump, come down with my leg planted and a newer guy just flies across my face, bumping me and maybe six inches to a foot from just plowing me over. I was completely exposed with a planted leg, recipe for disaster, and it certainly felt like he had come charging in with no real play on the disc and almost broke me. I got really scared and really angry, went 0-60 in 1.3 seconds and just spiked the disc where I stood. Turnover, HA (Cisco actually thought I had forgotten that I was on defense and thought I had scored, which would have been vastly funnier). I think I just got startled - friends from the sideline said it didn't look particularly bad, but in the moment it felt really reckless on his part. Of course, I immediately felt terrible, and after the point tried to explain that I had just gotten scared, I've had two knee surgeries, etc. It remains really hard for me to keep these in-the-moment reactions in check - in my head, it was a really stupid play on his part (and regardless of how bad or not it looked, he had absolutely no play on the disc and should have been slowing up well before that - I had time to catch it, land, and THEN he flew by me, so he was nowhere near anything legitimate w/r/t making a bid on the throw), and it's difficult for me not to respond with a what-the-hell-are-you-doing? Worse, the guy ended up leaving a couple of points later. It was 6 o'clock already, so he may have just been planning on leaving after two hours of frisbee anyways, but now I feel terrible if I chased someone off just from being scared. All of this is just to bookend the psycho-catcher story, and note that I get it, if you are "wired" a certain way in can be hard to turn it off. Of course, getting mad because you almost got injured by a dangerous play and dancing to first are not entirely the same thing, but still, I see the connection.
No comments:
Post a Comment