| The day dawned cool and soft, with the madman’s whispered promise of healthful deep-fried jelly doughnuts a la mode. Tax season over and needing a Bir Bintang & nasi goreng fix, the Brewerkz River Rats turned to an old, trusted friend, the Jakarta tourney. This year represents the 10010th consecutive year of Rats in Jakarta. Or, for those of you who don’t count in binary, this is the 12th year. Or, for those of you who don’t count in hexadecimal, the 18th year. Or for those who prefer to use the ol’ fingers-toes combo, take one standard human, chop off the left pinkie toe, the right index finger & the right big toe. Then count the number of remaining digits, taking care to double count the left ring finger. And THAT’S how many years the Rats have been coming to Jakarta. Capisce? Aside from setting a record for gluttony-for-punishment, the Rats have long been established at the forefront of important beverage consumption activities, if not especially noteworthy for on-field performance. No matter, for… THIS IS OUR YEAR! But what for this year, lah? Read on oh brave reader, who reads so bravely. In a stunning development, and a major departure from the most recent few tourneys which were “bodies-lite,” the Rats fielded an impressively deep team. By deep we do not, of course, refer a proclivity to exceptional thinking or any actual softball talent. No, we pretty much mean we expected to have enough semi-warm bodies to staff the field for the usual 5 or so games. I mean, even Mark “Last Minute Cancellation But I’m 100% Confirmed for the Next Tourney” Harris made it! Ahh, but the pernicious organizers did us one better, re-formatting the event to include more games and, hence, ruining any chance for the Rats to survive as more than broken shells of burned out humanity, much the same way the head of a deep fried garoupa has that sorta hollowed out glass-eyed stare thing working for it, which can prove disconcerting to Asia expat newbies and to visitors from cultures where fish is normally either filleted or served as a steak but never, heaven forbid, served whole with the head and tail still on because that’s just gross thank you very much. But we digress. No, the organizers scheduled EIGHT GAMES for the first two days, not realizing that the Rats cannot count all the way up to 1000 (or 8; or 8; or chop the entire left foot, every other finger on the right hand including the outermost ones, all but the left middle finger and all but the right big toe on those appendages, then double count all that remain). So despite the best laid plans and organizational wizardry to procure a greater-than-usual number of players, the Rats began the tournament more or less screwed. Except for the incontrovertible fact that … THIS IS OUR YEAR! This year’s tourney began like a rabid weasel on uppers experiencing a grand mals seizure. Which is to say, suboptimally. Game One – Friday 10AM. Opponents: USA Fattboyz. Result – Loss, 4-16. Noteworthy achievements. (1) Rats lead 2-1 after 1 inning. Go Rats! (2) Three foul ball K’s in the first 3 innings (Mark, Trot, PHat). (3) Innings 2-4 required only 9 batters. (4) Fully half our runs came in the 5th, when their pitcher walked 4 Rats in a row, throwing nary a strike. Succeeding Rats batter (Quatro) swings at the first pitch for an out to end the inning. Sigh. (5) Total of 5 hits for the game, .227 team batting average, 3 Ks, but, promisingly, 6 BBs! (6) And, of course, an insane number of pink hats. Game Two – Friday 1:30PM. Opponents: Singapore Fattboyz. Result – Second place for the game, 2-17. Noteworthy achievements: (1) No K’s! (2) Only needed 22 batters to complete 5 innings. (3) Only 5 batters reached scoring position. (4) 6 hits for the game (improvement!), and team batting average of .273 (more improvement!!), no BBs. (5) Defensive pink hats galore. Game Three – Friday 5:30PM. Opponents: Hong Kong Gas Hogs. Result – First runner up in the match, 2-18. Noteworthy achievements: (1) Bats came “alive” doubling the hit total of the previous two games. (2) 11 hits, team BA of .440. (3) Only one foul ball K (Quatro). (4) Spectacular number of defensive pink hats. (5) I Need a Chiropractor Award goes to NYC-based Road Rat Jim Clark who rather generously proffered his spine and perhaps 90% of his locomotor skills to the softball gods while making a terrific tumbling bone-rattling skull-whiplashing catch in left center. Didn’t save any runs and he’ll be immobilized in a full body cast for the next 5 months, but sweet effort, dude! (6) First extra-base hit, a double, is achieved (yay!) … by the guy who’s now in traction (boo!). (7) First non-defensive, non-K pink hat goes to…. TROT, who managed to leave, oh, maybe two seconds early on a tag up on a deep fly ball on the big field. Given that a severely arthritic nonagenarian with a walker and a poor sense of direction still could have made it easily from 2nd the 3rd base, and given that the Rats were down by something like 12000 runs at the time, this merits a very large and very pink sombrero. Day one summation, first the bad news: We sucked ass in a way that ass has never been sucked before. To say that we were hopelessly pathetic and awful would be a grave insult to all hopelessly pathetic and awful teams spanning the globe. I mean 8 runs on 22 hits in 3 games and a cumulative team BA of .319 … in SLOW-PITCH softball?? C’mon! But, the good news is that, hey – we’ve got nowhere to go but up from here! And, in a statistical oddity that will interest absolutely no one, fully 12 different guys can state that if they’d gotten “just one more hit” they’d be the team batting leader. And for the pair of o-fer gents (Aaron & Travis), the sky’s the limit, baby. Because regardless of piddling, insignificant things like results and quality of play, the real message of Jakarta 2010 Day One is: THIS IS OUR YEAR! Day Two dawned cool and soft like the world’s largest outdoor open air frozen yogurt confection that’s been left just slightly too long on the warm hood of ’96 Chevy Impala that’s just pulled into the local strip mall for some nachos and Slim Jims when the driver saw the TCBY but had to take a call before the first bite which caused the fro-yo to melt just enough to go from delicious to only good enough. No matter, for … THIS IS OUR YEAR! With several fresh bodies (if not fresh livers or brains) having arrived the preceding evening, the River Rats were ready to motor! Alas, the key to the ignition was mis-placed, so the early returns were less favorable than originally hoped. Game Four – Saturday 10:00AM. Opponents: Santa Fe. Result – Pipped at the wire, 4-13. Noteworthy achievements: (1) New day, new bodies, new hangovers, same lack of hitting and defense. (2) 9 hits – all singles, .360 BA, 1BB. (3) First Pink Hat on a foul ball K to new Road Rat ‘Serious’ Rob Padilla. (4) Dave Barker’s single. (5) Kurt Ball’s sweet tag-avoiding head-first slide into home plate. (Those four runs had to come from somewhere!) Game Five – Saturday 1:00PM. Opponents: SIMS. Result – Politely allowed the opponents to dance first, 6-14. Noteworthy achievements: (1) In an attempt to stem the tide of losses, Coach Mumbles straps on the knee brace and pitches. Fourth different pitcher, same result. [Because lousy hitting always gets blamed on the pitcher, right?] (3) 13 hits, including a 3B from Travis and a 2B from Kieso, .406 team BA. (4) Special recognition goes to Greg Parker for completing the first successful defensive play made at second base! A basketful of players had collectively gone 0-for-four (games) at second base. I’m not kidding – through four games the Rats managed to avoid cleanly fielding every single ball hit that direction. And don’t even talk to me about 2nd and 3rd base…. Hmmm, 0-5 for the tourney so far. No problem, because … THIS IS OUR YEAR! Game Six – Saturday 2:00PM (back-to-back game). Opponents: Tilac. Now for the past few years, it seems like the Tilac team always has our number, and once again they brought a strong team to the tourney. (Tilac finished the tourney second overall.) A taut, close affair from start to finish, this game featured everything, including timely hitting, bone-heading baserunning, a mariachi band, clutch defense, two turtle doves, gritty pitching and a partridge in a pear tree. Normally we present an inning-by-inning review of the game to give you, the discerning reader, a sense of how the tension built through the game as the seesaw tides of emotion whipped the players from Lofty Peaks of Positivity to the Dank Depths of Doom with only the briefest of side trips to the Swamps of Meh. But these are not normal times, and some dingbat (Bill) neglected to mark down the scores for each inning and now your humble (and seriously procrastinating) scribe cannot remember each nuance of the ebb and flow of the contest. So, let’s just say that things were crazy tight all game long, m‘kay? So, the game was tied to start the 7th, when the Rats pushed across a pair to take the lead. And, strong defense, coupled with questionable swings at balls outta the strike zone in the bottom half of the frame saw the Rats emerge 12-10 winners and FINALLY get into the win column! Noteworthy achievements: (1) First time since Game One (remember way back then?) that we got a leadoff runner and score to start the game! (2) 18-36, .500 BA, 2BBs. (3) Sport Playa’s K. (4) 3-3 for Travis “I Always Take 6 Games to Get Untracked at Tournaments” Washko”. (5) Triples by Travis & Wheelchair; doubles from Travis, HJ and PHat. (6) All-around effort from PHat, tough pitching, 3-3 with 3 runs scored. (7) Defensive resurgence at second base with Unka Steve steadying that ship. (8) Sweet K from Bill “I Just Wanna Contribute How I Know Best” Sieben. See, I told you that … THIS IS OUR YEAR! After a well-earned rest, the Rats took the field at 4PM against the Blok Mads team for Game Seven. Once again, the dingbats in the dugout managed to NOT record the ebbs and flows of which we spoke earlier. (I mean there were only seven people on the bench. No way could anyone have taken the 0.013 seconds to do this. And we’re not, like, slave drivers or nothin’.) In any event, this was another exciting and well-played game, though the mariachi band had nipped off with the turtle doves. This contest was a crucial game for the team, because this year’s tourney was organized such that all but one team would play for hardware on Sunday. And we didn’t wanna be the one lonely team on the outside looking in, like a downer version of a Norman Rockwell painting of a wide-eyed child peering through a knot in the fence as brown-eyed handsome men circle the bases in a heartstring-tugging paean to the timeless joy of a mythologized version of America’s pastime, hearkening back to a simpler time when neighbors knew one another and hot dogs and apple pie were made with pure beef, and every boy was named either Charlie or Skip or Jerry or Rocko and had a twinkle in his eye and frog and a sling shot in his pockets. But we digress, again. The Rats scored consistently if not in great quantities, plating three in the first inning, followed by solo runs in the second, fourth and sixth. The Blok Mads matched that total, however, and the game went to extra frames. The Blok Mads batted first and scored twice, putting the pressure on the Rats. But, with a runner on second and none out, El Quatro smashed a booming triple. After a ground out by Aaron (for his 3rd o-fer in the tourney), Sean “Drunken Master” Mirmelli bashed a double to right center to drive in Quatro and tie the game. Then greatness called and Kurt Ball answered. Mr. Ball, who was calmly sitting on the bench, minding his own business and drooling only slightly, suddenly heard Mumbles call for a pinch hitter. Kurt calmly blinked once. Twice. Then ambled to the plate and lashed a single to drive in the winning run in a 9-8 victory. (Whereupon Kurt calmly went back to the dugout and his drooling.) Game Seven Stats: 13-33, .394, 2 BBs, 1 K (Unka Steve!). Need we remind you, gentle reader, that … THIS IS OUR YEAR! This victory meant the Rats now had to wait to see the outcome of the Tilac–Hong Kong Gas Hogs game. A Gas Hogs loss would assure the Rats of playing on Sunday. A Tilac loss would mean the Rats required a victory in Game Eight to continue playing. As it turned out, Tilac did beat the Gas Hogs, taking the pressure off the Rats. This of course, meant the Rats could now start hitting like Mumbles intended. Game Eight, 8PM, vs. Silverbacks. First inning – First 5 Rats score, lead 5-1. Second Inning – Rats score THIRTEEN runs, including three homers. (Jeez – where the heck was all this firepower the rest of the weekend, you clowns??) The first homer was a three-run job by Ray Traymer. The second was another 3-run dinger by Wheelchair. And then, with two down and the bases (re-)loaded, Mumbles Vertlieb stepped to the plate. “No!” you say. “Can’t be!” you gasp. “Surely you jest” you declaim. (and so on) Sho’ ‘nuff. Line drive to dead center, perfectly bisecting the outfielders, and the ‘race’ was on. Three runs in and here comes Mumbles chugging toward third. With the ball still roughly 800 feet from the plate, 3rd base coach Sport Playa Lafferandre inexplicably gives the stop sign. Mumbles hits the bag, stops, realizes the ball is nowhere near the infield and jogs home for a GRAND SLAM!!! (Quoth Sport Playa: “It was the right call.” Quoth the entire Rats bench: “You are never coaching base ever again.”) Mumbles hitting a grand slam?!! What more proof could you possibly need that … THIS IS OUR YEAR! In fact, all but two Rats hit safely in the inning. The exceptions were: Greg Parker (excused because he walked twice), and Mark Kieso (excused because he sucks). So, now that the Rats’ lead had grown to 18-1, can you guess what happened next? But, of course, ice-cold bats, and a huge come back by the Silverbacks! After doing precisely diddly squat raised to the power of bupkiss for the first 4 innings, the Silverbacks suddenly started hitting laser beams and rockets all over the field. Six runs in the 4th – Rats’ lead is down to 18-7. “Naw, were still good,” accompanied by sage head nodding, was the feeling on the bench. Eight runs in the 5th – Rats’ lead is down to 18-15. And, a la Wile E. Coyote, the Rats’ bench is holding tiny signs that say “Yipe!” Rats score five in the bottom of the 5th. Whew! Lead back to 23-15. Silverbacks score twice in the 6th, but the game is timed out and the Rats have clawed back to a semi-respectable 3-5 record. Stats: 24-40, .600 batting average … in a game that didn’t really matter all that much. Nice timing Rats! And special note must be made of one the rarest sights in slow pitch softball: back-to-back Ks, by Bill “Gonna Stick With What Got Me Here” Sieben, and Travis “Reverts to the Mean” Washko. Our reward: the 9AM game Sunday versus the Blok Mads team to play for 3rd place in the President’s Cup. After an evening filled with an 11-hour chalk-board discussion of the Xs and Os to strategerifically plot our success, the Rats staggered to the field as… The day dawned cool and soft, like the hippest and grooviest sponge ever, dude! Despite being a local team, the Blok Mads apparently had trouble getting enough players to the field on time. But being true gentlemen of sport the Rats allow them to pick up a few other players from other teams so we could at least play the game. It’s go time and the Rats were fired up and ready to play! A semi-frequently iterated sports cliché involves discussing the level of desire of a certain competitor by stating that he/she is “nails” and/or is “spitting nails”. Or barbed wire. Or that said competitor would chew his/her way through the fence to get onto the field of play. Suffice it to say that there is some kind of mastication of metal going on. Well, one Rat took that maxim a little too literally. On maybe the second pitch of the game, the Blok Mads player lofted a ball just foul down the right field line. Aaron “Pretty Boy” Oliver raced over to attempt the catch. Realizing that he would be unable to actually catch the ball, but with a flair for the dramatic, Aaron did something no one expected, and so dove and tried to chew his way THROUGH the chain link fence. I’m not sure how many physics majors (or even materials science specialists) there are out in Global Rat Land, but you might or might not be surprised to learn that we now have empirical evidence that the tensile strength of a chain link fence in Jakarta is greater than the tensile strength of Aaron’s face. Or, to be more precise: T-sub(CLFiJ) > T-sub(AF)*B-sub(72H) where B = beer. In other words, the tensile strength of a chain link fence in Jakarta exceeds the tensile strength of Aaron’s face multiplied by three days of drinking beer. Well, after we packed Aaron off to the medical facilities (see *** below for an important factoid that emerged from this), we had a game to play. Once again, this was a tight, closely fought game. The Rat’s big inning was the second, when we scored a half dozen. Another 3-run burst in the 4th saw the Rats take the lead. Heading to the top of the 6th, the Rats were up 9-8. The first Blok Mads batter hit a ground ball to 3rd base, which was booted, then dropped. Runner on first. The next batter hit a line drive up the middle. PHat threw out his glove and nearly snared it. The ball hit off his glove and rolled straight to the spot Quatro had just vacated at second base as he headed to cover the bag. Quatro attempted to reverse direction, as a snared ball would have gotten at least one runner. Quatro planted his foot. The foot slipped slightly. And the ball rolled maybe 3 inches from his outstretched glove. The result: no outs and 2 runners on base. More stuff happens in a sequence your scribe cannot recall precisely, but the upshot is a tie game with 2 outs and the go-ahead run on second base. PHat induced the Blok Mads hitter to hit a grounder to the short stop. One lazy hop. Two lazy hops. Third hop – BOING! – the ball hit something and sailed over Unka Steve’s glove allowing the go-ahead run to score. Down one run, the Rats went quietly in the bottom of the 6th, including greg parKer watching the third strike land precisely in center of the dish for a looking K. OUCH! Bummer, but no problemo. We’ll hold ‘em and get ‘em in the bottom of the 7th inning. I mean, we waited for the opponent to be able to start the game, and there are no games scheduled for this field after us. We’ve got one more inning so let’s leave it all on the field, because … THIS IS OUR YEAR! Naturally, the umps then called the game for “time”. And that was the incredibly anti-climactic end to THE YEAR THAT TURNED OUT NOT TO BE OUR YEAR! Oh well, there’s always next year. Role Call & Cavalcade of Chumpions: SMALL SAMPLE SET SUPERHEROES: * Dave Barker – 1-1, 1.000; veteran move to take no more at bats, thus preserving his team batting title * John Thomas – 3-4, .750; 4R; 4 runs on 4 plate appearances – why the hell wasn’t this guy playing more?? * Joe Kardon – 3-4, .750; 3R; welcome to the universe of SEAsia tourney softball! * James White – 2-3, .667; R; we gotta get you to and hammered at tourneys more often, ‘cuz that’s when you hit, baby! PROFICIENT, BUT NOT OVERLY SO: * Quatro – 12-21, .571; BB; K; 4R; strong hitting Day Two * Phat – 6-11, .545; 4R; BB; K; didn’t totally suck at pitching all of the time * Wheelchair – 12-23, .522; 8R; stayed out of the hospital * Ray Traymer – 10-20, .500; 3BB; 7R; homer hitter and defensive dynamo * Greg Parker – 4-8, .500; 5R; 2BB; K; PM disappearing act NEARLY PROFICIENT: * “Serious” Rob Padilla – 9-19, .474; 2R; 2BB; K; thanks for making the trek from Dubai, dude, hope to see ya again (when we’re all hitting!) * Unka Steve – 5-11, .455; 2R; BB; K; presented stern-faced visage to intimidate and dismay our evil opponents * Kurt Ball – 4-9, .444; 3R; 2BB; game winning hit; nice slide into home (safely); drooled * Mark Harris – 5-12, .417; 2R; K; made it to a tourney! * Mumbles – 2-5, .400; 2R; grand slam; assembled this cruddy non-hitting lineup * Sport Playa – 2-5, .400; important dugout sarcasm; lousy base coaching ASPIRE TO BE NEARLY PROFICIENT: * Jim “Chiro” Clark – 2-6, .333; R; BB; sacrificed health for greater good, resulting in extra ‘vacation week’ in Singapore * Mark Kieso – 6-18, .333; 5R; 2BB; failed to hit safely in the second inning of Game 8 * Jeff “Whitely” Whitley – 1-3, .333; R; BB; bon vivant and raconteur * HJ – 6-19, .316; 2R; nice D at first base, now go back to the minors (NYC) and learn to hit, willya? * Sean “Drunken Master” Mirmelli – 4-13, .308; 3R; didn’t see a ball all weekend that he couldn’t flail his glove at ineffectively NO HOPERS: * Trot – 2-7, .286; 3R; 2BB; K; memorable pink hat; infected toe * Travis “I Forgot to Pack My Game When I Moved From Shanghai” Washko – 7-26, .269; 4R; memorable K; blown out arm * Aaron “Pretty Boy” Oliver – 3-13, .231; 3R; learned something important about fences in Jakarta SUPER STAR STUDMUFFIN EXTRAORDINAIRE: * Bill “Enjoyin’ My Cuppa Coffee in the Bigs” Sieben – 0-3, .000; 2K MOST EGREGIOUS PLAY BY A NON-PLAYING PLAYER: * Dog Levy – forgot to bring the pink hats to the tournament. BOOOOOOO!!! *** According to Pretty Boy, the important lesson learned from Jakarta 2010 was: “We now know that 4 stitches at SOS Jakarta = 2 bottles of vodka at Red Square.” Well, ok, but how many bottles can I trade you for 7 stitches? |
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