DT Rants

Beautiful sunny, lovely empty field, short numbers. That's the new war cry of saturday softball. But as usual, the few, the strong and the brave will prevail. And with Gretzky, Diana and Rube volunteering to play all time defensively, we managed to put together a good game. With three out of nine players taking the field, it left each team with only 3 batters, so ProfZen rules (so named in memory of Prof Zen who invented it) and Rube rules were in effect, we played reverse double of nothing. Horfun did a great job recruiting by getting her vietnamese language classmate from Canada to show up. And Stephen brought his fellow exchange student Stephanie as well. They both contributed significantly to the game and we really hope they show up again. Sadly, they will only be here till May, but they were here since Sept. I guess it takes Horfun a couple of months to get her courage to ask a guy out ;).
When I say they contributed to the game, we have to mention Stephen allowing Rickey a homerun (bad leg and extra slow baserunning considered). Rickey hit a deep fly ball past Stephen and somehow, managed to limp all the way home. To make up for the humiliation of the new guy, Stephanie extracted her revenge on Rickey by hitting a shallow pop fly just over his head at 3rd base. It was perfectly weighted and perfected struck to reach a trajectory just out of his glove.
Gretzky and The Generalissimo had the biggest bats all day. They were beating the stuffing out of the ball, and going deep and into the empty spaces. I swear Heidi was going have an aneurysm our there in LF. I could hear that vein in her forehead throbbing from way over in the infield.
We switched around a little in the second game. Removed Rubane, and shut down RF instead. This worked out slightly better for the ONEs at first, but in the third inning, the TWOs big bats were simple overpowering. The ONEs were shut down mercilessly.
Play of the game must go to that Indian-National-Foreign-Construction Worker. He pulled a liner high into the sky that never came down... literally. The ball got stuck in a tree, wedged perfectly between two branches. Everyone took turns to knock the ball down, and EVERYONE missed. A foreign construction worker finally came along, weighted the ball in his hand, and let it fly. His first throw, hitting the branch holding the ball, and it was released from its grasp to finally fall to the earth. How ashamed should we feel that this guy just steps up and makes an accurate throw, while we, who play every week, cannot make the same?