What are you looking at?
Just because my softball team lost over 150 games in a row is no reason to scrunch up your nose at me. You don’t even know me!
I bet your softball team doesn’t have two professional Latinists. I bet your softball team doesn’t drink delicious Grain Belt Premium beer. I bet your softball team doesn’t practice in the dead of winter on a frozen lake in the sub-zero temperatures of Minnesota with no gloves or hats while listening to Polka music!
Is your team sponsored by a local bar featuring an Italian meat sandwich with a racist name? Did your team of 40+ y/o men have a “parent night” where Moms and Dads traveled from other states to receive their complimentary bumper sticker that said “My son plays softball”?
Did you ever have a player get so excited that he ran to third base instead of first? And then kept going into left field and eventually into the parking lot and off to the bar, screaming the entire time? Did that ever happen with one of your guys? Was his name George?
No, for you, it is always about the 150 game losing streak, isn’t it? Maybe you never considered the streaks of blood running down our arms and legs as we put our very own bodies in harms way in the spirit of softball? What about the time Zin broke his nose on the fly ball? Remember that?
No, you don’t remember that because you were playing for some other softball team. One that wins games every now and again. So good for you. I’m proud of you. And your accomplishment.
But I’ll tell you this: I won the list serve lottery on the same day I got my notice that the fees are due for another year of softball and I’ll be damned if one of the emails made my heart flutter just a bit and the other made me more paranoid and angry.
I am a winner, but not the kind either of us want me to be. You want me to be the “write up the cute story about your bad softball team” kind of listserve winner and I want to be the "guy who actually wins softball games" kind of softball winner.
And now as I wrap up this email it looks like neither of us get what we want.
So there.
Bricker
[email protected]
Minnesota