THE SPORTS BOTTOM - August 27, 2010
Don’t assume you have all the answers. You don’t. Just make the proverbial ass out of yourself and move on with your life.
It never ceases to amaze me how much I learn life’s important lessons on the softball field. On the field and off the field. Traveling with a group of teammates and friends to a major national softball tournament is still one of life’s biggest thrills for me. I learn so much about my teammates and myself, but mostly what I learn is that what I thought was true or assumed was true about other people is about as far away from the truth as possible. Just amazing.
Dateline: COLUMBUS, OHIO. The 2010 Gay Softball World Series took place in the beautiful capital city of Ohio this past August 16-21, 2010. What a week of fun playing softball, hanging out, partying and dancing, and just enjoying life.
The Gay Softball World Series is an annual softball championship tournament hosted by the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance (NAGAAA). Gay softball leagues from across North America compete in local leagues, following NAGAAA rules and player ratings, to qualify for the annual World Series. My team, the San Francisco Inferno, has qualified three of the last four years for the World Series. 2007 in Phoenix, 2008 in Seattle and 2010 in Columbus. We have every intention of qualifying for Chicago 2011 also. Wish us luck.
The city of Columbus welcomed the largest Gay Softball World Series by hosting the opening ceremonies on Monday evening, in downtown Columbus, along the banks of the Olentangy River. It was a lovely setting and a wonderful ceremony. After the ceremonies and a visit to our “local sponsor bar”, time for bed. First day of games was coming early the next morning.
Tuesday morning, pool play begins. We played two games on Tuesday. The first game was against the Atlanta Avengers. We played a good game. We batted OK, we played OK defense, I pitched OK. We lost to Atlanta 11-7. Not a bad showing for our first game of the tournament, especially since we took the field at 7:50AM Eastern time. That, of course, is 4:50AM Pacific time. Not to make excuses but that’s pretty darn early to get up for a softball game. But we did OK and we had another game to play that morning.
Our second game of the pool play portion of the World Series came against the Kansas City Rabid Kittens. Yes, one of the best team names I’ve heard of in any sport. We played the Kitties in Seattle in ’08. I totally remember the team from then, and we got the chance to play them again in Columbus.
We played a solid game throughout against KC. Hitting was solid. Defense and pitching, both solid. We won the game, something like 12-5. It was very nice to get our first tournament win under our belts.
So we finished our first day of the tournament at 1 win, 1 loss. Not too bad at all. We were “in” both games. One of our goals for the tournament was to not get “blown out” by any teams in Columbus. We were heavily overmatched in Phoenix in ’07. We didn’t want that to happen again in Columbus.
The Columbus Clippers minor league baseball team hosted GSWS Night (the scoreboard never really did mention the word “gay” at all, just GSWS and NAGAAA, same deal with the signs around downtown Columbus welcoming the softball teams, I guess that’s how it is in the Midwest) at their game versus the Scranton-Wilkes Barre Yankees. Huntington Park in Columbus is a lovely ballpark to watch a game. Good times. Not sure who won. We left after singing “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch.
Day two of the World Series had us playing two more pool play games, versus Montreal (J'aime Montréal!) and the Austin, Texas Ball Busters. We were pretty excited that we didn’t have to play at 8AM in the morning. Yay, we don’t play until Noon! Boo, it was freakin’ hot as Hades by Noon! Oh my. I’d totally forgotten what the Midwest feels like in August. The locals kept telling us that the heat wave “broke” two days before we arrived. It was only 92 degrees with about 80 percent humidity. Kill me.
But we had two ball games to play. I was back on the mound for the game against Montreal. We played awesomely, adjusting to the heat and hitting, fielding and pitching very well. We beat our Canadian friends 15-9, or something to that effect. Great game played by everyone on the Inferno.
I assume the Montreal team was friendly. Most, if not all, of them spoke French so I couldn’t understand a word they were saying. At one point I was on the mound and as I was getting ready to pitch I kept hearing “wait”, with a heavy accent. Finally Barb, playing shortstop, hollered at me and said, “they’re saying ‘oui’, not wait!” Ah. J'ai besoin de beaucoup de boissons.
Next up was the Austin Ball Busters. This game was back-and-forth the whole way. We wound up beating Austin by one run or so, it was very close. What a game! This game was the perfect example of not assuming anything during a game, or life for that matter. Wait until you have all the answers (play all the innings) before you make conclusions and decisions. It’s just easier that way. Sit back and enjoy the ride.
We scored four runs or so in the top of the first, and my confidence level was soaring. “We’re unbeatable today!”, I kept thinking to myself. Suddenly two innings later we were down by three or four runs and time was running out. We rallied to take the lead, held them on defense, didn’t score ourselves, then had to hold them again during Austin's last at bat.
Great play by our catcher for a key out. Timely strike out by Suga for the second out. And having a burly lumberjack playing first base never hurts, as he has a wide wingspan to collect errant throws and oddly hit balls. We held them and had our third World Series win out of four games.
Pool play ended with our team and spouses, all 22 of us, having a team dinner at Eddie George’s, across the street from THE Ohio State University campus. Lots of fun and everyone was just awesome. We had to wait until later that night to see what our ranking was going to be after pool play, but we were all in a pretty good mood.
Our “local bar sponsor” bar had showers for the go go dancers to “perform” in on the dance floor. We got to the bar before the go go dancers started, so naturally Barb, shortstop and left-center fielder, and the coach’s wife, got into the shower in the middle of the dance floor and “performed” for us. Very nice, Barbara. Still looking for the video on Facebook and YouTube.
After hitting a couple more bars we got the text from the team manager that we were ranked number nine out of thirty-eight after pool play. NUMBER NINE!!! The Inferno had never been ranked this high before at the World Series. EVER!!! We were quite pleased with ourselves, even taking photographs of ourselves in the streets and hootin’ and hollerin’ all over downtown Columbus.
After hitting the dance club we went to see the brackets for ourselves. Sure enough there we were, No. 9. Just amazing. What also set us off a bit was the fact that the other team from San Francisco in our division, the team that beat us by 22 runs earlier in the season, was ranked No. 38 out of 38. Whoa!! I know I was very pleased with ourselves after seeing that. We didn’t have to play until 1:00 the next day and we were playing the team ranked No. 24. No problemo!!
It’s easy to see now that we, well, at least me, can’t speak for the others on the team, but I was getting a bit big-headed, believing that we were invincible. I was brought back to Earth very quickly the next day. The first day of double elimination. Us winning three games in pool play was great and all, but in reality it didn’t mean too much. Every team played four pool play games, regardless if they won all the games or lost all the games. Everyone gets a seed and at least two more games to play in double elimination. We were so proud of ourselves, but what had we accomplished really?
First game in double elim was against the Tampa Angels. We came in cocky. It was hot again. Games were delayed an hour due to games running late, but no excuses. We left our bats in the hotel (figuratively, not literally). I pitched one good inning. Couldn’t get out of the second inning.
We lost the game 6-2, or something like that. Two freakin’ runs! Can’t win slow-pitch softball scoring two freakin’ runs! Very frustrating. And the worst part was we didn’t get to play another game that day. Since it was double elimination and we lost our first game of the day, and no team was to be eliminated until at least Friday, we had to wait until the next day to play again. Very frustrating. We had basically a full day to dwell on the fact that we didn’t hit and only scored two runs. Very very frustrating.
What was even more frustrating was that the other San Francisco team, the one which was ranked dead-last after pool play, got their shit together, pulled their hangovers into a bunch and won three games in a row during the first day of double elim play. Three in a row!!! We won three games, but in pool play, so we didn’t get to advance based on our wins. The Xtreme won three “double elim games” in a row and rose up through the bottom of the bracket and scared some people along the way. Well done, Xtreme!
So we rolled into Friday. It’s now or never if we’re gonna make some noise in the tournament. We needed to get on a six-game winning streak if we were gonna play for hardware on Saturday. But one game at a time. Gotta win the first one if we’re gonna play the second one.
First up was the Shady Ladies from Austin, Texas. This was one of those games that just eats you up for a long time, especially if it’s the game that knocks you out of a tournament. Against the Shady Ladies we scored 3 runs in the first and led 3-0. Second inning the Shady Ladies scored 11 runs. ELEVEN!!! Tough to win after giving up a crooked number like an eleven on the scoreboard.
But you know what? We battled back and battled back. Our defense was rock solid after that one inning. ROCK SOLID! And suddenly we started scoring runs and coming back. The Shady Ladies began to shake in their tutus a bit. Final score: Shady Ladies 12, Inferno 10. That’s right, if we eliminated the 11-run inning we beat the ‘Ladies 10-1. Very frustrating.
So the Inferno was done for the 2010 Gay Softball World Series. Yes we won three games, more than any other Inferno World Series team. In Seattle we won two games, one pool play and one double elimination game. It would have been nice to move one or more of our pool play wins into the double elimination round, but we can’t do that.
All we can do is try and learn from our mistakes and learn from our memorable week in Columbus. Maybe we need to focus more attention on the double elim games and not worry so much about winning the pool play. Not sure if that’s possible, but I do know that we/I overreacted when we got our No. 9 ranking. In reality it meant nothing. We still played the minimum number of games (six) even though we won half of them. We should learn from the SF Xtreme. Ranked 38 out of 38 with a 7AM game the next morning. What do you do? Sulk? Bitch and moan? No. Have another beer, get some sleep and kick some ass and get three double elimination wins in a row the next morning! Go Xtreme!!!
Thank you, Columbus for a wonderful week. Hope to see you soon and good luck hosting the Gay Games in 2014. I know you’ll do fine.
