The worst feeling in the world for a ballplayer is when a team comes from behind to beat you at the last second. I’m no ballplayer — I’m a gawky Jew with below-average sports abilities — but I imagine that to be true. Even though I possess no athletic skill, that didn’t stop me from being really pissed off on June 18th when the team called Bunch Of Guys scored a bunch of runs in the bottom of the last inning to beat us by one run, 16-15. That game hurt. It was our first lost of the season, and it demoralized us Expos. We actually lost two games in a row following that loss, and I’m convinced it was because we let the late inning heroics of Bunch Of Guys get to our heads.
Last Thursday we had a chance to do something amazing. We were poised to not only defeat Bunch Of Guys in our rematch, but as the game wore on we had a really good shot at coming from behind to beat them in our last turn at-bat. Oh, the poetic justice! The irony! The…whatever the fuck you call it! It was there, in our hands, and all we had to do was close our meager little fists around it and make a fist and yell, “Mine! All mine! Mwahahahahahaha!” while laughing maniacally.
In the end, we didn’t do it. We choked. We choked like any number of amateur porn stars choke on dicks. We choked and we heaved and we spit up all over the field, retiring our last batter with the bases loaded in the bottom of the final inning when we had a chance to win the game with a simple base hit. Oh God, it felt like getting raped on prom night. Or, I imagine that’s what it feels like getting raped on prom night. The humiliation and bad taste it left in our mouth was enough to make us want to skip graduation because you just know when you step up to accept your diploma everyone is going to be thinking to themselves, “Rape! Rape! RAPE!”
I’ve tried my best to put it out of memory already, the little minutiae of this particular loss. Both teams went scoreless in the first inning, and I think we were down 1-0 after two completed frames. I walked in my first at-bat but was stranded on third base. I played right field for two or three innings. James made a ridiculous catch running over from center to nab a ball hit well into the gap, then turned and doubled a runner of second base. We played pretty good defense, actually. We turned some double plays, too. In my second at-bat I led off an inning with a single to right-center and came around to score. We had the lead for a little, I think. Nate had one bad inning where he walked in two runs, but other than that he pitched an amazing game. Any team that scores 10 runs in a men’s softball league deserves to lose. Any team that scores 9? …Well, we lost.
In the final inning, we were down by two or three runs. I don’t remember which. I again led off with a hard hit single. I might have been able to stretch it into a double but I didn’t want to chance it, and it didn’t really matter since the rest of the events that unfolded happened after me, and wouldn’t have occurred any differently so long as I was already on base. Pete followed me with either a walk or a single of his own. Someone, maybe Andrew, maybe not, hit a ball in the air that was dropped and I had to hustle into third base. I came around to score, somehow. Oh, wait. I tagged up and scored on a fly ball to the outfield. So did Pete, I think. It was 10-9 with the bases loaded and two outs. All we needed was a single, but someone — I think it was Mitch, hit a fly ball to the outfield that was caught. Game over. Comeback denied.
I didn’t want to call Pat about the loss, but as I sat in line at the In-N-Out on Holly Drive waiting to foul out and eat some greasy fast food to cope with the loss, I gave him a ring and told him what happened. Nate and I both knew he would immediately get pissed off and claim that if he were there, we would have won the game. It was, after all, his spot in the lineup that came to bat in the game’s most-crucial situation. And Pat was truly pissed off that he was 3,000 miles away in Boston. I think his exact words were: “If I was there we woulda won,” followed by “Fuck,” and then, “Damn it. The game before we looked so good,” followed by, “DUXK,” followed by “FUCK.” Thanks, iChat!
Tonight we have a worthless game against the Chuck Norris All-Stars. We’re already the fourth seed in the playoffs, and the only way we can move up is if we win both our remaining games and the team in front of us loses both of their regular season games. They won’t. We won’t. I just want to go out there and have fun and hit the ball hard and not get hurt.
Wish us luck.
Hey, I just found a bunch of photos from the first Los Nuevos Expos game of the 2009 season. That was my first game as a softball player! Remember that, when I nearly broke my toe? Hilarious! Look at how gay my sweatpants are! Notably absent from this series of photos is the one where I’m striking out, and you can see the ball bouncing off the plate but my swing has already been completed. It didn’t take more than a second for me to realize what the picture captured before I clicked the “Delete” button.
Photos by kT Evans:
Master Musicians Of Bukkake – Bardo Chikkhai
Jesu – Deflated
The Hylozoists – The Possibility Of An Island
