The Mets Fan Should Probably Talk About Opening Night…
But, it’s been done elsewhere and better. So instead, I’ll talk about my weekend. I would have posted on Friday, but I was prevented, for this past Friday found me driving the 6 hours (which became 9 thanks to the Capital Beltway) to Charlottesville, VA for the annual Virginia Law Softball Invitational. 112 teams of law students, each with 10+ members, playing softball with varying degrees of skill, drinking with wildly varying degrees of ability, and just generally being stupid. It’s the ultimate confluence of nerds and sports.
Law students have a tendency to be very competitive, and the ones who are once-and-future jocks (to wit, the UVA team… damn they’re good) especially so. It’s a pretty meaningless tournament, but people take it seriously. (NB: net proceeds from registration fees go to a pretty good charity, so that’s nice.) But it’s really hard to think “oh, that’s normal” when one team of dicks (U. of Unnamed Big Midwestern City, I’m looking at you) are talking shit about their trial ad team, and people playing schools they’ve never heard of almost always barely suppress the urge to do that charming little “you can work for us some day” chant, and the majority of participants are in 30’s neighborhood but act like high school kids.
My team got hopelessly outgunned. That will happen when you’ve never even met half of your teammates… and one of the players grabs a ball before the first game and says “this is the first time I’ve touched a softball…” But we had fun. And that’s what sports are all about, right? I mean, not all of us can be Jose Reyes (more tools than Home Fucking Depot) or Chris Carpenter (it’s 2007, bitch, how you like us now), playing professionally. And if you’re not staking your livelihood on something, it needs to be fun- or else why do it? Maybe that’s just my “I was never particularly good at any given sport” side talking.
Anyway, my line for the weekend: 3 G, 7 AB, 1 H, 1 R, 2 K, like a .700 fielding %age but 2 really really sweet diving catches at SS, 79 beers, 8 hours of sleep (cumulative), 824 miles driven, 1 paper written between 6 and 8 AM today, 3 meals involving pulled pork, 4 calling birds, fuck I’m tired.