Category Archives: play

We’ve managed to put together enough free play personnel to play half field. Players who were regulars during the season lose their stones and are gone, while the hard core core remains.

It seems we’re all going to vote for Hillary–so, there’s that!

I dislike half field, but I’ve been in the worst slump of my softball career over the last few months, and it hasn’t been because for half of those game right field has been absent as a target due to playing the half field. Meanwhile, my declining skills are so apparent as a fielder in the field that all I can do is own it. Still, the golf course, my athletic Plan B, remains far away from consideration.

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats, 1795 – 1821

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Stacy

Two notes: yesterday the game was won when a throwing error on a successful force out at home allowed three runners to score in the top of the first extra inning. This is the kind of unusual stuff that helps make Free Play Softball Great, again.

I’ve mentioned before that as far as I know, in our core group of twenty or so players, two have earned pages in Wikipedia, an astronomer, and an educator/theorist, (the “DaVinci” in his field.)

But, I will put my money on Andre being the most interesting man in our world. He is a chef, actor, director and wicked left handed pull hitter.

Andre, one of his daughters, grandkids

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Packing up on a very hot day, after a fourth one-run outcome in a row.

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To run, or not to run: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;

Sitting isn’t the challenge.

If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.
–E. O. Wilson

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“The way I look at it for the sake of giving you options is that there are rare occasions when the ethos of our free play approach trumps the scientific aesthetics of softball. Yes, technically and by one of the rules found somewhere not very near, you earned the extra base. But, I’m in general agreement with the ‘feel,’ of our group and urge you accept your best option as a solution to the ineffectiveness in this instance of the law.”

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Free Play Softball League evoked my frustration and depression for a moment yesterday. It was a nice day for softball but by 9:45am only four players had arrived, increasing to seven by our start-time of 10:00am. Very disappointed, after announcing to Dave that I was going to go home, but would first have to find some volunteers to take care of the equipment, I walked back to the field. Potential equipment caretakers were ambivalent, yet as I negotiated with several, three more players arrived. So, at 10:15am I decided to stay and proceed to make up the line-ups.

The week before several players had offered constructive criticism about my so-called handicapping. One mentioned I should do a better job of spreading out the “horrible players.” Since I don’t even make such judgments, and could argue that this advice is anchored to incorrect analysis of what has driven our recent lopsided games, I, nevertheless, considered what this advice entails.

Yet, on this day, we were missing so many of our most competent players that I was compelled to go out and play shortstop for only the second time in fourteen seasons. I’m not a horrible shortstop–I would say I am consistently mediocre at all the positions except for first base.

------------1 2 3 4 5 6

DB's--------7 7 0 0 2 5 -21
DK's--------0 3 4 1 4 8 -20

Not unpossible!

First one run game of the season.

I was mediocre in the hot spot, went 0-2, then 5-5, and made out the lineup without a thought about anything other than you need two teams of six each.

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The votes are in: Dave’s mom wins the Free Play Softball League’s Fan of the Year Award for the first year in a row.

She is coming out to Field #11 late in the season to see us bolt together games with nine to twelve players. With the reduced forces, we play what we term ‘half field.’ Everybody gets a lot of plate appearances. Dave’s mom has seen it all by now. I wonder what she thinks?

The Free Play Softball League has been greatly advantaged by the new diamond and the fact that the conversion of the main Forest Hills open field to four diamonds has kept the pee wee footballers and soccer players off the turf. The weather has been great too: two rainouts, 27 games played, and only the specter of snow next Sunday threatening to keep Dave’s mom cozy in her home.

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Can Free Play Softball League outlast The World Series?

But full of fire and greedy hardiment,
The youthfull knight could not for ought be staide,
But forth unto the darksome hole he went,
And looked in: his glistring armor made
A litle glooming light, much like a shade,
By which he saw the ugly monster plaine,
Halfe like a serpent horribly displaide,
But th’other halfe did womans shape retaine,
Most lothsom, filthie, foule, and full of vile disdaine.

excerpt, Spenser. The Faerie Queene Book 1

Larry, 78, brought (I think) his grandson, eight grader Spencer to join us today.

He flailed away in batting practice and in his first at bat. I suppose he discovered his hardball game didn’t automatically translate to our more mild field.

But when she saw the knight his speare advaunce, 120
She soone left off her mirth and wanton play,
And bade her knight addresse him to the fray:
His foe was nigh at hand.

Then he kept his head down, held his spear more lightly, and slew a bunch of dragons.

It still turned into another, yawn, one run game 13-12 for one of the teams, or the other team. Somebody won.

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