That Winning Feeling

Tracking the City Paper softball team’s pursuit of a perfect season

Current Record: 1-13 (.077)

Victory—for the City Paper softball team, it’s no longer just the title of a mediocre Sylvester Stallone vehicle.

The morning started in typical fashion, with a 14-3 loss to the Washington Post that still featured some fine play on our part. (Exception: This correspondent, whose failure to stop a shot to center led to a Post home run and called up bad Little League memories. It’s the kind of event that seems perfect for one of those “Autobiography as Haiku” pieces, but I’m not sure—I can never make it through one of the damn things.)

Our second game, against Express, was much anticipated by both sides. Our advance scouting told us that the Express squad was easily beatable. Meanwhile, Express, taking the low road, took the game as an opportunity to talk smack. We in the editorial department aren’t the types to return fire on the smack-talk, even after a 14-9 win. The production department is another matter, however. Here’s manager Mike Kalyan:

To Chris Mincher: Loved your blog posts on 20minutemen.org), but a word of advice that most people learn in Journalism 101: when writing a story, at least try and get people’s names right, especially when talking smack. My name is Mike Kalyan. Maybe you’ll remember it now after a good helping of crow. (For some great restaurants that serve it, search our Restaurant Finder). And, even as a production director who doesn’t write for the paper, I could easily find more than 32,352 words of my own (who needs Wemple and Cherkis?) to attack your coaching standards. There’s plenty to work with! Good luck next week!

But, Kalyan says, respect is due:

Saturday’s game was probably the best we played all season (and not just because we won), and I’ll admit I was a bit worried with your two back-to-back home runs in the first inning. You guys really played an excellent game, and it was nice to have a close game after losing most of them throughout the season to the mercy rule.