Friday, June 6, 2008

13-0 Rain Out

Sort of.

We had a game scheduled last night against the team coached by our friend E. Besides his son, he's coaching a couple other kids from the neighborhood, including one whose college-age sister is the assistant coach.

Along with Coach P.'s son and my own, these boys from E.'s team form part of a scrum of about eight or nine kids who have been friends since kindergarten. The dads too have become friends and the group spends a lot of time together at baseball and basketball and barbecues.

Which is all a long way of saying the pregame trash talking had been going on for weeks. With the added bonus of yesterday being the last day of school, it's hard to imagine a more highly-anticipated event.

Needless to say it rained. It didn't drizzle. It didn't mist. It rained. The National Weather Service kept issuing increasingly desperate warnings. By midmorning I got a weather alert that said, "RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!!"

Whatever. There was no way this game was getting canceled if there was any chance at all to play. A couple parents called during the afternoon to check in and I assured them my extensive experience as an amateur meteorologist told me there would be a break in the weather. Then I'd hang up and return to cursing and begging the radar images, which consisted of bright red circles directly over the field.

About ninety minutes before game time the sky went black, so dark I couldn't see across the street. No rain fell, though, and soon it lightened, at least a little, and I told my youngest to get his uniform on.

By the time we got to the park most of our team was there. There were pools of standing water around the bases but we got brooms and pushed them around enough to make the field playable. Meanwhile, E. was getting increasingly frustrated waiting for his own team to appear.

"You've got what, nine of your guys?" he asked.

"Yeah. Plus another one called and said he'd get over here if we play."

"I've got five," said E. "One of my parents called to say I was putting his child's life in danger by asking him to even show up at the field. You'll probably get a complaint about me."

"Why? What did you say to him?" I asked.

He told me. It was pretty much what I'd guessed.

"I told him to call you if he had a problem. You're the league rep."

Lucky me.

Meanwhile another wave of clouds passed through, allowing my son to prove he really isn't bright enough to come in out of the rain. They cleared, though, or at least abated enough to permit a baseball game.

Except E. still didn't have his team. "Bastards," he said to nobody in particular.

"Guess this means you forfeit," Coach P. told him.

"Screw you," said E.

"Says so in the rule book," I told him. "You need at least eight players. We have nine. You have five. Smells like forfeit to me."

"It's your fault," said E., pointing at me. "Chosen people, my ass."

"Yep," said Coach P. "We win 6-0. Look at it this way; you did better than if we'd actually played the game."

"Bastards," said E.

This morning we settled on a date and time for the rescheduled game, a couple weeks from now. Coach P. and I told E. we'd consider it a rematch.

"If you win, we'll call the series tied at 1-1," I said.

"When you lose, you'll be down 0-2," said Coach P.

"Bastards," said E.

UPDATE: The game's been officially rescheduled. No more forfeit. Not that we'll admit it to E.

3 comments:

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

you could have loaned him a kid, and you and Coach P could have played.


Why didn't you? What kind of example is that?

Adorable Girlfriend said...

AG is shaking her head at BP and laughing.

Snag said...

We offered to loan him some kids. We told him he could keep ours indefinitely for that matter, like until they were eighteen. Problem is, half the fun was going to be having the friends pitch against each other and if we hadn't him those kids, the teams would have been so hideously skewed that even we would have gained no pleasure in vanquishing him.