Well well well,
Look who came to play ball.
We did.
Our league tourney wrapped up last night as there were four teams left. The Aggies ( the one seed) played Wray (the three seed) at 6:30. So I had to go watch that ball game to see the outcome. Plus those two teams had played three times and each time it was a one-run game. I knew that neither team liked the other so I figured it would be a war.
It really wasn't. The Aggies came to play and Wray couldn't hit. Aggies 18, Wray 9. I believe that it was pretty much a shocker of an outcome. Wray slipped into the losers bracket to face the winner of our game and the Angels.
Again, the Angels didn't roll over and die. We didn't hit the ball well either but kept battling and battling. We tied the game at 12 in the bottom of the 7th on a Noyes triple. The winning run is standing at third with one out. I come up because I know all I have to do is fly out to score Niz. What happens? I get intentionally walked to first. Dibbo gets intentionally walked so now the bases are juiced for a force at home. Greg comes up and calmly rips a line drive into left field and that's the ball game kids. RPG 13, Angels 12.
We didn't even leave the dugout because we were the next game at 8:30 against Wray. The difference was that we were relaxed, while they were pressing. Plus they used their six home runs and only scored 11 runs with them. We were laughing and carrying on in our dugout. I told Brian, "Look at us. We're having fun and they're falling apart. I can tell we're relaxed because we are eating chips." Brian is a delivery guy for Frito-Lay and had brought two BIG boxes of chips. Here we were eating chips and having a good time. We ended up beating Wray, 26-18 and advanced to the championship game.
That proved pretty anti-climatic as the Aggies were fresh and we were fairly, okay, really tired. I didn't mind at all losing to the Aggies and claiming second place. It was a great run.
Football season yet?
Make no mistake, I do love summer. Everyone knows my passion for playing softball but after today's email, I'm ready for football season.
It's time for pools, pools, pools and more pools. Today's topic: a suicide pool. Not like the Dead Pool, no this is where you pick one NFL team to win every week. If you lose, you're out. Sounds easy? Good luck. Last year's had four people take home $3100+ EACH. I'm so in. But I know that I'll get screwed in week 3.
It's also time for fantasy football. Another wonderful season of FF is almost at hand. It's time for me to join my two or three leagues that I'm always participating in or running for that matter. It's one of the only times I have good organzational skills.
Let's play some football.
Ain't karma a bitch?
Simply said.
The number two seed in our league tournament goes "two and bbq" as we say here. Translation: They lost their first two games of the tourney and are now finished. I loved it because the manager is this wishy-washy, sniveling, coniving, take-any-advantage-he-can-get...fuckbag.
I know I've said things about our divisions; A teams being able to hit six homeruns, B only hitting three and getting spotted six runs by A teams. I bet if you look back at the season, those guys were more consistent hitting the ball out of the park than even we were. Because Blake (their manager) is a chickenshit, he never went A so he could have the six-run spot. What really pissed us off (well pissed Cko off more than I) is the fact that they beat us because of the spot AND they hit more bombs than we did. The other thing about them is that Blake checks balls for the Utrip stamp and whines about other teams' balls not being proper or anything like that.
So they finished the season with a 12-4 record wrapping up the number two seed. Before their first game Blake told the ump, "After we beat the Possums, we're going to go A." The Possums after all had only won one game in their entire three-year exsistence. Final score Possums 13, Woodyz 12. We had played right after them and stood along the fence cheering for the Possums, yelling out advice, trying to position fielders to help them.
So Woodyz dropped to the loser's bracket to play the sixth seed, the Hesston Mennonite Brethren Church. What happened? Oh you guessed it, HMBC sends Woodyz packing 25-23. At one point, I thought the MB church was going to run rule Woodyz which would have been even sweeter.
I really don't harbor all that much ill will to most of Blake's team. However, I wouldn't be broken up if Dave tore up an ACL, if Blake took a liner off the skull or if this dumbass kid Josh had his chin split open by a horrible hop. Other than that, the rest of the guys are really okay. Oh I forgot Terry L. His whiny ass need to have a collision with me at home plate because I would stand over him as he picked his teeth out of the dirt and say "Yeah, now do you think that was a bad call? The bad call was you running home. Probably should have stayed on third."
Who cares though, we don't have to deal with them anymore.
Dammit. I did it again.
It's a never ending vicious cycle. Although, I thought the socks would prevent such an injury, they in fact, did help by not allowing the injury to be very deep.
Every time, I think I'm going to heal or even make it through a season without tearing my shit up, I do. Friday was no exception as I slid into home.
Why do you do this to yourself you may ask? This time, I had no choice. Surely you have a choice, Rusty, you say.
Not this time. It's league tournament time in our softball league. Being the competitor I am, I was going to leave everything out on the field. We had locked up the fourth seed and so we played the 5th seed like every natural tournament. Thanks to our lovely spotting runs rule, we were down 6-0 before the game ever started. They jumped on us for four runs to take a 10-0 lead and we hadn't even batted yet. Of course, it seemed like we left our sticks in the bag and only scored one run in our half of the inning. Ten to one after one inning. In the top of the second, they scored three to extend their lead. We came up in the bottom of the second and scored four to cut it to 13-5.
Our team kept chipping away at their lead. It was not like we were making a lot of errors, they were hitting the ball, but our sticks were starting to pop too. We were down 20-19 heading into the bottom of the seventh. With two outs, Nizzle rips a base hit shot and gets on. I come up and single up the middle so Niz moves to second. Batting behind me, Dibbo does something I've never seen as he punches one right over first base. The gods reached down and hit Niz with some speed as he scores the tying run.
Now I'm standing on second as the winning run with two outs. Fidel Castro who was stroking the ball quite nicely, rips a piss rocket that moves their cockyassholeprick short stop to his left. The SS boots the ball which trickles into left field. I'm rounding third with Cko as the base coach sending me home. I stumbled just a bit rounding third but I wasn't going to be denied. I heard both Fidel and Cko yelling "DOWN, DOWN DOWN!!!"
For some reason I was holding my sunglasses in my hand instead of wearing them. I don't know why I didn't have them on but I didn't. I was just focused on home plate. I saw the catcher standing so combining that with the "Down" yells, I went in headfirst to the outside of the plate to score the winning run. Now it was about 97 when I scored and I was literally soaking wet. When I bounced up (yes I really did bounce up) I was caked in mud. I glanced down at my leg, not surprised to see bright red blood in the spot that I always tear open. But that passed as my boys were there pounding on my back.
We had a two-hour break before we played the number one seed at 9:30. That one was another great ball game but we lost 19-18.
After the games, I had to clean my wounds. That was one of the more painful showers i've ever endured. I had to get down and dirty with the abrasion to pull all of the red clay out of it. I know it would have been worse if I wouldn't have been wearing my long socks. I also think that had it not been at homeplate sliding over uneven ground, I wouldn't have chewed up my leg so bad.
Oh well. I think it was worth it.
Jumping out of my skin
is tough to do.
But I nearly accomplished that trick. That's a neat trick because I combined levitation from a completely horizontal position.
What caused me to react this way? The one and only thing possible.
A spider.
A big, brown, monstrosity of a spider.
I did happen to notice it was a brown recluse too. Yes kids, they are poisonous.
The short story goes, that I was laying on the couch reading the new Harry Potter book (yes, all of the sudden dorkishness comes to the surface in a boiling torrent) when I felt this light sensation on my arm. I brushed it away and gave it no second thoughts.
A short while later the sensation was back. Being that my thoughts were well tied the beginnings of Mr. Potter's sixth year at Hogwarts, I wasn't paying close attention. Again a hand brush. It was beginning to feel more like the back of a shampoo bottle with the instructions for lather, rinse, repeat, only it was feel the sensation, hand brush, go back to reading.
The third time, I looked down at my arm.
SPIDER!!
Every muscle in my body tensed and my whole body levitated off the couch. HOLYICKYHEEBIEJEEBIESGROSSEWWWONMEAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
Once my feet hit the floor, the spider died within three-tenths of a second. I mashed it's poisonous ass into the ground with a satisfying crunch. I'm certain that little brown bastard was about to bite me too.
Dammit, I hate spiders.
Nothing like playing hard
So the reunion has come and gone. It was a family reunion. I know the common response to family reunions is to fake appendicitis so to avoid them, but that's not what we expected during ours.
Ours was fun.
Lots of fun.
Instead of leaving Friday afternoon like the first wave did, my pops, sister, cousin and myself hung back because I had a ball game. After the beating we administered to the hapless Possums, (29-9 and we had to spot them 6), I dashed home and showered and off we went.
We left at about 8:15 and got to my uncle and aunt's house at 11. Not too bad actually. There we received instructions about what Saturday would hold. Mom was there and asked me if I would drive her and Lori to the camp where the reunion was. I wasn't really thrilled about that as I had just driven to their house, plus they wanted to leave at SEVEN on a Saturday morning. That's a violation of all kinds of laws and treaties.
I did agree because I knew that I had to set up the wiffleball fields. At seven freaking a.m. we were off and running to Ashland NE. about an hour from the house. Those dumbass bastards at the camp managed to forget that the normal route was closed due to road construction. We're not talking about construction that was started on Friday, we're talking about the fact that they HAD TORN OUT ALL OF THE ROAD. I was a little pissed as we had to backtrack about 12 miles to get to where we wanted to go.
Once we got there, I became the carrying bitch as I hauled in everything except my wiffleball stuff. Finally, I got to work on my project of setting up both fields. I didn't get the memo from Mama nature that said "Oh by the way, you will be dripping sweat by 10 a.m. because I'm going to make it so warm that fire hydrants will chase dogs." At least I had the good sense to change into the shirt I was going to play wiffleball in. I was dripping wet as I set up both fields. Granted my baselines weren't straight, but people got the general idea.
We all ate lunch then had some general information i.e. introductions and the like before we adjourned to the wiffleball area, which was right beside the pool area. That was a brilliant move as the proximety allowed people to go cool off between games. Not me though as I was a designated umpire during times I wasn't playing.
The tourney was a smashing success as we did manage to field 8 teams. My team, the Custodial Crew, ended up finishing second in the entire tourney. It was so much fun and I played hard.
After the tourney wrapped up, i hit the showers. After cleaning up and cooling off, not nessacarily in that order, John, Steph and I ate while we waited on my father. The supper wasn't that bad, but Dad's abscence was curious. I finally went back to his room and he was laying on the bed waiting for us. Off we went to the casinos. A good time was had by all.
Of course it would have been better if I would have won.
Almost healed.
I figured out exactly when I strained that muscle. It's from being idiotic and taking a couple of cuts left-handed.
Guess who's not leff-handed? Oh yeah. Me!
On a side note, I've got the music bug. Most of the time, I've got music going in the background. However, the past couple of days, I've felt like grabbing my cd's and driving out in the country with the windows down and some good tunes blaring.
Too bad gas prices are so high.
Depsite the high gas prices, anyone for a good game of Fugitive?
JESUS CHRIST PEOPLE
All you fuckers need to get a grip.
I think I'm getting older
The reason being, for the first time since 1988, I spent exactly ZERO dollars and ZERO cents on fireworks for myself.
Usually, I'd go peruse the aisles of a couple local fireworks stands, coming away with some firecrackers just to pop in the yard. This year however, I didn't even make it to a stand.
I was reminicsing about the good old days when BJ and I would count the days until we could pop fireworks. Of course, back then, you could only pop them on the third and the fourth. We would somehow scrounge together money, but we also had an in as we would help unpack a fireworks stand that was behind the restaurant that BJ's mom worked at.
The guy who ran the stand told us, "You two come see me tomorrow morning and we'll work something out." He'd cut us a great deal and we would be set with all kinds of daytime stuff, mainly explosive things and smoking things. We would go back to our backyard and blow all kinds of things up. Sometimes we'd go to his house and piss the neighbors off because we were blowing stuff up. We set their bushes on fire numerous times and nearly had to call the fire department once or twice.
A few years later, BJ, Jarr, G-squared and myself had a Roman Candle fight of epic proportions. We got another great deal from the fireworks stand and ended up with 160+ 8-shot Roman Candles. The fight itself lasted about an hour, but of course we all put on old clothes. They actually managed to light me on fire during the fight. Damn those flaming balls. It was a great time punctuated by the next morning's HUGE sign warning people not to discharge fireworks on college property.
Ahh, yes. Those were the good old days.
All things considered....
it was a good evening.
My dad and I were slated to umpire together, both of the local Pony Boys teams in the grudge match. I was looking forward to doing a game with my father, even though I had the plate duties. The game was scheduled for 6:30, so about 5:35, I started getting ready. About that time, I changed to the weather channel because there was a pretty vicious cloudbank off to the west. Scrolling across the bottom of the screen was a severe thunderstorm warning for my county. The warning stated that the storm would be here by 5:45.
About 5:43, it started raining fairly well. I happened to look out back and i saw a couple of little itty-bitty hail pieces. Nothing serious. All of the sudden, the skies opened up and it was as if someone was throwing ice cubes. The hail was nearly golf ball size and just popping all over. It was hammering down along with a deluge of rain. Fortunately, nothing happened to my exploder. At that point, I was certain that the umpiring was done.
That was fine because I could execute Phase two of my plan. The plan, which worked to perfection, was to join my friends at Old Chicago for a few drinks. I showed up. I said my hellos to the table of friends. Josh was yelling at me to ask Tim how Belize was, which keyed me into the fact that he finally proposed to his girlfriend, which my comment was "It's about damn time." It's good thing, which the potential for a kick ass wedding and an even more kickass party.
Another friend of ours was there. Leah had been in town for a while but this was the first time I had gotten to see her. A little background was that Leah and Brian moved to Florida and got engaged. Brian is one of Timmy's former roommates and a good friend. I sat down by Leah, and the first thing I noticed was that the ring wasn't on her finger. I didn't mention anything about it. Later my suspicions were confirmed when I overheard Leah talking to Christy and she told Christy that the engagement was off. Oh my gosh. Brian and Leah had been together for seven years. Eventually, Leah curled up on me and told me parts of the story because we kept getting interrupted by people coming by. It sounds like a real mess. Brian's in town now so we'll see what happens as this will be a wierd week. I won't judge either of them and will continue to be a good friend.
Should continue to be interesting.
