From : Ed
Agner
Sent :
Monday, August 4, 2003 10:35 AM
To : Bill
Barnwell, Philip Rippa
Subject :
OK. MY GW Grand Slam
So we played Saturday morning and
it was like 3000% humidity
with fog, but it wasn't too hot until the late innings when the sun popped out -
then we all
just hoped for rain and lightning
to put us all out of our
misery. Thusly, early-on no one could really see anything hit in the air because of fog,
and later in
the game no one could see anything
in the air but the sun -
so it turned into one of those ugly games were no one REALLY wins. So very
ugly.
All the same, my little team of
losers is somehow hanging
in with the second best team in the league. And we're down 3 in the bottom of the
7th and I've
already ran a frickin' marathon in
CF as usual. So I'm
spent and my legs are rubbery and I just want to go home.
Anyway, bases juiced (SOMEHOW), no
one out and I hit a liner
into CF (since my opposite-field approach had been stymied by them putting in a good
RF and anythingI pulled
went straight to the 3rd baseman), they're playing me straight away so I've got a
HUGE frickin' gap between
the RCFer and the LCFer.
So I'm watching the ball and I'm
thinking maybe. Then the
RCFer starts making up ground and as I trot to first I yell out, "Aww,
fuuuuuuuuuuuuuu..." and then the crash just as the RCFer got his
glove on the ball and
"----uuuUUUUUUUYUUCK YEAH!!!" The LCFer took out the RCFer like Ronnie Lott killing
someone over the middle
and the ball went rolling and they're both dead and I'm stoked - and running like Sid
Bream.
So their entire team goes
sprinting out for the ball as
the two OFers lie motionless and like 7 hours later I'm rounding third heading for home as
they're getting the ball
in and the race is on. I probably should've stopped, but...Ehh, I had gone too far
at this point. So, I'm all
Enrique Wilson; slipping and sliding around and all ugly and goofy and
shit.
I look up and their catcher is
just standing there right
on top of home plate, without the ball and without any intention of moving -
smiling at me and
daring me to do it. And I'm
thinking - do I kill him or
do I slide? You know the answer.
So I plow into him just as the
ball bounces in front of
the plate - BAM, Rose-Fosse: he goes flying, I skid across home and we're both bleeding
internally, who knows
where the ball is.
So when I come to, the
other team's yelling and screaming
about a no-contact rule, their catcher is lying there with buzzards flying over
him and I have
no clue where I am. Their
manager is going Billy Martin
on the umpire, I'm dead, my team's all like "DUDE, Fucking awesome hit on the
catcher," instead
of, you know, CELEBRATING VICTORY,
and our manager has NO
CLUE about ANY rules whatsoever let alone enough about a no-contact rule to argue all
this.
And I'm lying there, trying
to regain my senses and catch
my breath fearing that the ump was gonna call me out after all that.
So after like 10 minutes of
yelling and screaming and me
lying there, crying in pain, the ump lets the run count since it was the catcher's fault
I had to kill
him.
We play again tomorrow and
I don't know if I can raise my
arms. If we win, we're guaranteed second place. I can barely move here and yet...you know
there's no way I'm passing
up playing. Hopefully it rains us out so I recover a bit. As is, I
seriously doubt I would have
even Ben Grieve's range in the OF.