We must protect this house!

I'm not sure where to begin on this one. We didn't lose this weekend, but we also didn't win. Well, we should have won, except for the two run bonus both of our opponents received because of our lack of girls. As far as protecting the house, I think we can say we did, although we didn't necessarily destroy or even infiltrate theirs. We're now 2-4-2, staying steady at .333, despite my prediction from last week.

In any case, a non-loss or a technical win is reason enough for me to award game balls. As we played a doubleheader, today there are four game ball recipients.

A game ball goes to Holly for showing up to spectate, only to be called into duty as the third girl on our roster. Despite having not played softball since high school-ish, she reliably got the bat on the ball and also did well in her stint at catcher. Had this been filmed, right now you would be watching a highlight showing Holly chasing down a pop-fly, all the while saying "Ohgodohgodohgod" until the ball was safely in her glove. Kudos.

Emily gets a game ball for pitching 2 full games for a total 14 innings, and taking a no decision in both only because of a technicality... and not complaining about her ERA (*cough*Brian). She also fanned at least two, including one of the other team's better players, which resulted in a spontaneous chest bump between Sean at first and the other team's first base coach.

Eags gets a game ball for playing well and running all over the field despite being more hungover than any of us. Some nay-sayers may fault his misjudgment of a fly to center, but I say that gave us the opportunity to see a dramatic 8-6-5 play at the plate: Eagle fielded the ball, threw to Derek on the relay who sent it to Ryan who was covering home. Yes, we do have some interesting plays... and they all seem to involve Eagle for some reason. A hungover Eagle at that.

Sean "Kraft Easy" McElroy also deserves a game ball for digging out some tough balls to get the batter at first. Not as much color to add on this one. I should have given him his game ball first.

There will be no true recap of Sunday, as 1) I was hungover and 2) it was a doubleheader. It's going to be more just memory fragments... we'll see how this goes.

For those of you who missed the games on Sunday, you missed the opportunity to see Ryan demonstrate the similarities between him and a freight train, when he turned the corner at third on a deep fly and headed for home. If you weren't there, you might think I'm referring to his ability to turn like he's on rails. But if you were there, you'd realize I'm talking about the fact that it takes a whole lot of track to stop a 100-car train. Score that as a triple, 8-5-2.

Meredyth demonstrated a chase down of a pop fly from the catcher's position, flinging her hat off like a catcher's mask. Way to be Meretek.

I demonstrated just how out of shape I had become, pulling my hammy while running out a grounder to first. I was safe, but after consulting with the team's medical staff, it looks like I'll be on the 10-day DL with a grade I strain.

We collectively demonstrated the importance of base coaching, as we got ourselves into a few base running errors. The key here is that the base coaches should actually be near the base, as opposed to the more laissez-faire style Sean and I used. Had this been in a screenplay, it would have looked like this:

At a dusty softball field, two men sit on the bench watching as their team is batting. The batter hits the ball into the outfield. As the fielder scoops up the ball, a runner approaches a base.

Basil, at a conversational level, to Sean: She should hold.
Sean: Yeah, hold.

Both men watch as the runner turns the corner and is tagged out at the next base.

Sean: Ahh, well.

So while I'm on the DL, I plan on attending games and taking over coaching duties for at least one of the bases. Whichever one is closer to our bench. Hey, I got a hamstring to worry about, I can't be traipsing all over the field.

Sean demonstrated the correct way for two men to do a chest bump: run towards each other, jump in the air, and bump chests together, with the "naughty bits" as far apart as possible. We'll use some graphical examples to explain some of the do's and don'ts of a chest bump:

DO

• Get some air
• Keep your arms back

DO NOT

• Attempt to hug in the air
• Look like this while chest bumping. For that matter, do not chest bump while playing tennis

As a last example of a train wreck of a chest bump, I offer this.

Now, there's stuff I missed so I'm going to try to rattle them off: Derek apparently has it out for Eagle, sending three heaters down the line at him while he was on third. Fortunately Eagle is nimble. Mario really dislikes bees, to the point of dancing like a raver in at attempt to scare them away. Emily apparently doesn't like percentages over 100%, as she shaded out on yet another drink-up, keeping us from achieving the 111% drink-up turnout (including Holly) we would have had, had she attended. BSSC likes orange. Opponents liked hitting down the first base line. And I'm out.

Discussion question:

• Is Basil as a base coach worse than having no base coach at all? Explain.

Fun fact:

• The longest freight train ever was made up of 682 ore cars, and was pushed by eight locomotives. It was 4.5 miles long.
  

We are the Thirds

We returned to that field in Newton to play the Team in Grey That Was Undefeated (not their real name). As it turned out, they didn't need to change their name, fictional as it was. And our team nickname (the Thirds) is somehow more fitting given our record (2-4). At least until next week's double-header...

TiGTWU brought some pretty strong batters to the field, which found gaps in our defense and ran up the score in the bottom of the first. Unfortunately our bats weren't as heavy as they have been in past games: Sean "Bueno" McElroy went oh-fer; "Sloop" John B struck out swinging, which many people might have missed, but which I have captured for posterity in the blog. Even Brian ended a two-out three-hit rally:

The outlook wasn't brilliant for I Gave My Word that day,
The score stood 10-5 with but one inning left to play.
And with one out left to go in the top half of the seventh,
There stood no chance of the Thirders scoring their eleventh.

Mario came up to bat, and Basil would come after,
The rally cry soon faded, into halting laughter...
But Mario let forth a single to the wonderment of all
And Basil hit one too, into center it did fall.

Emily soon would join them with another hit!
And who came next but Brian (who thought he was the sh*t),
And Brian settled in the box and pounded on the plate;
He then stepped back a little, just to make the pitcher wait.

And now the pitcher holds the ball, and he now he lets it go
And now the air is shattered by the force of Brian's blow...

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright.
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light.
And, somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout,

but there is no joy in Newton --
mighty Brian has popped out.

But there were some bright spots from Sunday's game:

• Meredyth learned her lesson from last week's game (click link for Brian's haikus, or Bri-kus as he likes to call them) and ran down the first base line on a ball that dropped in fair territory about a foot from the plate... and was safe!
• Mario won the Rudy award for tripping/sliding into first base. Well, actually, not so much for that play, but rather for repeating his trip/slide into third to convince us that the first time was deliberate. Rudy! Rudy!
• Apparently, Eagle was able to sell his $50 Radio Shack-special to a Newton resident, who tried several times to get the plane airborne. A soft toss resulted in it... crashing into the ground. Another attempt at a soft toss resulted in it... crashing into the ground. A hard toss resulted in it... making a graceful loop. Then crashing into the ground. After trying for ten minutes to fly the plane (accompanied by Sean's soothing laughter) our friend retreated. And came back with his family. And this time, when he tried a soft toss... it crashed into the ground. So that was amusing at least.
  

Some statistics:

• 82% of the team went out for beers after the game (Derek and Emily, we're coughing and looking in your general direction)
• 0% of the team could say with any authority what the difference between a homophone and a homonym were. The internet was no help here, as it seems that no one agrees on what a homonym is
• Alan Cooper has at least 73% too much interest in homonyms
• 33% of the team admitted to using their T Pass to floss
• 67% of the team are either liars or don't ride the T
• Sucking on a T token is 6.25x as lucrative as eating one of Sean's nose hairs
  

Fun fact:

• Polish and polish are Capitonyms (there's a bunch of them). I'm not even going to guess if they're homonyms.

Helpful fact:

• You can send text messages to Google (466453) to find the address and phone number of bars, etc. For example texting "Buff's newton, ma" returns the location of our last drink-up.

Did you know?

• Brian and Sean both have web pages. Check them out, they're pretty sweet. As a warning, Sean's gets a little weird.

The game before this one...

Some of you have commented on the lack of posting following the last game. Yes, there was quite a few occurrences that... occurred, but in the end the blogging just didn't occur. Occur. I'm in a weird mood tonight.

To catch everyone up, here's a brief run-down of the game vs the Lime Green Crushers. In haiku format.

We walk on the field
Wearing camo as eye black
You'd think we're better

9-4 double play
Karen threw to Rebecca
Runner should have tagged

Catcher in lime green
Yelling at teammates and Sean
Needs to get out more

We're in River Gods
Eat skewers, laugh at Brian
Reason's forgotten

That's it for now, I'll be posting about our last game soon...