Daily Archives: August 2, 2015

Free Play Rings the Bell Curve

"Don't start singing until I raise my hands and give the signal."

“Don’t start singing until I raise my hands and give the signal.”

(Actually, Dave, back to the camera, is discussing further sales of 26th Anniversary Freeplay Softball swag.)

85 degrees at 10am. The crew could barely be moved to execute a batting practice. It was the oddest start to a game in my fourteen years.

But, what followed was a second game in a row during which both teams played each other like heavyweights, trading hard blow for hard blow, until defensive troubles keyed a last inning rout. As the handicapper, I always hope for smoothing by virtue of individual mean performances canceling one another out. However, on Sunday, once again I was reminded that of the two kinds of outlier performances, the offensive mediocre becoming godlike, and the defensive godlike becoming nightmarish, it is the latter outlier that most ably causes the train to jump its tracks.

Mike

Mike

When new players show up for the first time, the big test is in the future. Will they return? Mike, pictured above has returned, and I for one am grateful. We had a brand new player, Eddis, do a Travis Fryman impersonation at third. Butter. Wow!

And, then, at bat, Eddis finally got a hold of a ball–and we knew that was going to happen.

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