Shadows Softball 2008: In Which We Swunt

Record: 0-4 (.000)

Last night, Matthew Smaldone—who’s been doing heroic work for the City Paper Shadows making left field a place where doubles go to die—sent an e-mail to his fellow players. He linked to a Web site called How to Play Slow-Pitch Softball as a Team. The page, Smaldone wrote, had “good advice on hitting, fielding, throwing, pitching.”

It’s not the e-mail you send out after you’ve handily bested your opponents in a couple of games.

Shortly before our Saturday matchup against the Examiner, we had some reasons to feel positive. During BP, Amanda Hess had mastered a swinging-bunt technique we promptly called a “swunt,” and logistics manager Will Atwood Mitchell had stirred up the team with a quote from the Tao Te Ching: “When two great forces oppose each other, the victory will go to the one that knows how to yield.” And yield we did, though I’d argue that our loss to the Examiner was a lot closer than the 9-2 final score might suggest; Kim Dorn delivered some solid at-bats, including a stand-up double, and Tim Carman was smart on the mound, leading the Ex’s biggest bats to swing at some bad pitches.

But our performance in the second game at Layhill was every bit as brutal as the 22-1 final score suggests; clearly Atlantic Video is hungry after making an early exit in the playoffs last year. Swunting is no use against a team that was still working hard to make put-outs even when the game’s outcome was certain. All we could do was watch the hammering, as the photo above shows; that’s me on the right, softly sobbing and looking forward to the bye week. (Photo from the MMSL’s Web site.)

Correction: As Mitchell rightly points out in the comments, the photo above was actually from 4/19 softball action. I was probably still sobbing, though.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Shadows Softball 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.