Big Fish in the Puddle

Sandbagging happens. People like to win. I don't need it explained to me, it's fun to be top dog, yada yada. What I don't understand is taking the win day after day without ever accepting a real challenge. Clearly I am getting at something here.

I play on a D league softball team. D is the lowest division, and somewhere between few and none of us know what we're doing. Remember how in T-ball there were more base advances due to overthrows than base hits? Yeah, that's us. Sometimes we hit happy hour at the pizza place before or after the game, and by and large nobody gets too down about playing poorly. Like I said, D league recreational slow-pitch softball.

Since we started playing last year, there has been a team in our league who just beats everybody, hands down. Living shit kicked out, pride stepped on, bases run. Today they beat us 30+ to 1.

Dear other team, what are you doing in D league? There are plenty of other divisions that play at the same field on the same day. C, B, and A leagues to name a few. I'm not sure exactly how competitive they are but most notably they are not the lowest possible league. Is it fun showing up and crushing the teams that came to enjoy themselves and play ball despite not having played in college? Is it actually necessary to wear batting gloves and that thing on your forearm to prevent tennis elbow? Must you talk shit to our pitcher if you don't like the way he's tossing it? Fuck off, you didn't even call small baby bouncies.

I mean fuck. The world has competitive people in it, but what we're talking about here is not competition. Competition is trying hard and beating somebody who put up a fight. This is the point where I bring up the oft-used paintball parallel. My home field is chill as hell. We go out and miss the first game while talking to the field owners and shoot our friends and taunt them if we know them well enough and then break for lunch. Some days the usual suspects are few and the new guys are many. If we wanted we could bring out our super tournament guns and put some serious hurt down. The problem is that we have this aversion against being complete douchebags (sandanas and obsession with shooting games aside). The regulars all gun down to handicap themselves and make it more interesting, both for the new guys and for the guys who have been playing for a decade. And sometimes the new guys shoot me all day, and hey, thems the lumps. Gonna play guns you might get shot


Ok, I'm going to get off this particular soapbox now....that other team is still a pile of stupid heads, though.