Lost & Found

Saturday Evening

My week started with me finding out I lost my catcher's mask.

I thought I had it, but when I got to the field at M Street on Tuesday it wasn't in my equipment bag. I walked back to where I had parked my car. I assumed it had fallen out of the bag and was still in my trunk. Nope. Apparently, I was a dummy and I left it at the field on Sunday.

(I asked around, to see if anyone else picked it up, but no go. Sorry, Frankenmask. You treated me well for many years, saving my face from being caved in at least three or four times. I had hoped we would retire together, but I blew it.)

(This seriously sucks. I don't know that I have enough games left in my life to make it worthwhile to buy another mask at this late date. If I was really flush - had a lot of money to spare, that is - I'd buy one anyway. I can't justify an extra $80 or $100 expense right now.)

On to other pieces of shit from the past week.

If you've been reading my stuff about softball for a long while, then you probably think I write about anything I feel like writing about. That is, you may believe I never hold something back when I really have an urge to let it out. You would be wrong to think that. Sometimes I specifically make it a point to NOT talk about something. This week will be one of those weeks.

Believe me, there's something that happened this week that I'd love to lay out here; unburden my soul, so to speak. I won't do it, though, because it's a mess and I won't be around in the coming week to do my job as manager and clean up that mess. My good buddy and fellow coach, Robby Costello, will probably be the one who deals with it in some way or another. Meanwhile, I'll be down in Connecticut with Fast Freddie Goodman at a Black Sabbath concert.

(I miss a game maybe once every five years, if that. The only excuses I ever use for missing a game are family deaths and/or concerts with Fast Freddie. I'm serious. The reason I use concerts with FFG as a good excuse is because there are only three bands I ever go see in concert and how often will they interfere with softball? The groups, in case you're interested in what an old geezer like me gets off on, are Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and AC/DC. Those groups don't tour every year. In the case of Black Sabbath, it's been about twelve years between tours. I promised Fred I'd go with him long before the schedule came out. When I saw the schedule, and also saw we had a game on the same night as Black Sabbath, there was no backing out of my promise to my buddy. We'll have a great time. I hope it rains, though, and I still get to play that game later in the season.)

You're probably a bit lost after all of the blather above. Let me give you some scores and I'll let you guess which game is sticking in my craw.

SOUTHSIDE TAVERN - 10  Brewers - 7
SOUTHSIDE TAVERN - 13  Cranberry Cafe - 13

We lost the second game.

Uh-Huh. Read the score again. Yeah, we lost a tie game.

Can I possibly just leave you hanging and not let you know how that was possible? Yes, I can. I have to do so because, as I say, it's a mess I'm not going to be able to clean up myself and I do not want to make it more difficult in any way for my fellow coach by giving details. It would mean airing our dirty laundry in public (which I might do if I was going to be around to face the situation, but would be self-serving and cowardly considering I'll be out of town.)

Sorry about that.

Suffice to say it was not a good night for my softball soul. The actual score went in the books as a 14 - 13 loss, a forfeit. Other than that, no more details will be given. Maybe I'll give the details to you later if the situation deteriorates and I don't think it will affect anything by that point. We'll see.

SOUTHSIDE TAVERN Statistics

 Meanwhile, let's move on to (I hope) happier things.

Sunday Afternoon

Boy, this is not the best week ever.

Titans -  3  BOMBERS - 0
Titans - 13 BOMBERS - 4

Obviously, the games did not make me happier. Our bats were dead, mine included (I went 0 for 3, playing at 1B and C in Game 2, and was rung up by the ump for my first strikeout of the year) and the Titans remain undefeated.

We'll meet them again in the finals, I hope. I'm sick of losing to those guys. I like them, personally, but we're something like 1 and 12 against them now over the past few seasons. And we're really not that much worse than them. We can beat them. I want another chance at it.

Not much to talk about. Dave Nutter had the best day at the plate, going 3 for 5. Jimmy Botting hit a 3-run homer in game two. That's about it. Big Jay Atton did a decent enough job pitching for us in game one, but when we as a team were racking up only four hits it didn't matter.

We get a week off because we still finished first in our division. We await the winner of Renegades - Moe Howard Club in the semi-finals.

Now for the surprisingly good news. Frankenmask lives!

[See him smiling?]

I got to the field at about 7:40am, well over an hour before game time. There are three diamonds at Smith Field, the park where we play. We were playing on Smith 3. Last week, we played on Smith 1, and that's where I left Frankenmask. I put my gear down on the bench at Smith 3, and took a walk over to Smith 1.

I didn't really expect to find Frankenmask still there after a whole week had passed. God only knows how many games were played between then and this morning. But, as I neared the field, I started scanning the bench area, always the optimist. I saw nothing.

Something caught my peripheral vision. Way off to the left I saw a bit of silver glinting in the morning sun. I turned my head for a better look. It was Frankenmask!

He was propped up on the furthest end of the outfield fence on a Little League diamond, facing the field like some sort of baseball scarecrow. I was so happy, I ran over there like a little kid. I may have even skipped. If the mask had never been put together with silvery duct tape (thus the name, Frankenmask) I never would have seen it.

God bless the kind soul who propped him up on the pole for me to see. And God bless however many other people saw the mask but didn't take it or throw it away or use it for target practice or whatever else. He was as good as new.

(Well, I mean he was as good as I had left him. Obviously, Frankenmask will never be 'as good as new'. He was pretty clean, though. I guess being left out in the rain a couple of nights didn't do him any harm. As a matter of fact, I can picture him sitting on that pole, the rain coming down, with thunder and lightning flashing all around him, and the winos who sleep at Smith during the night being scared shitless thinking they had some sort of softball delirium tremens.)

The surprisingly good news for you is that this is the last softball post for two weeks. If I write about anything else in the meantime, it will almost certainly be something having nothing to do with sports; maybe part of my Connecticut adventure with Fast Freddie.

BOMBERS Statistics 

Soon, with less batter stuff.