Veterans Of Terrible Softball Wars

B-Squad Horrifed to Find Squad of Burly Afghanistan Hunks, not Aging WWII Veterans

I’ve been to a VFW hall now and again in my life and I’ve got to tell you the people who were regulars seemed like mostly happy drunks that hadn’t done anything more strenuous then strolling to the men’s room now and again. These were the world’s softest guys, men who had settled on drinking at the VFW hall sometime between the wrap up in Korea and the beginning of the mess in ‘Nam.

The VFW crew, therefore, seemed to make ideal softball foes. Guys who would have a hard time fielding the ball with any type of consistency. Hits that should be doubles held to first because it’s hard to get that beer gut down the base path with any real speed these days. Skills that either never existed or had rusted to a friendly creek. In other words, a team not unlike our heroic B-Squad.

But the guys who showed up on Tuesday didn’t look like my recollection of the VFW hall crew. For one thing, they all had massive forearms. How do you get forearms like that? They seemed to be made out of flesh colored iron ropes, there must certainly be some sort of dietary supplement or surgical procedure to get forearms like that. These guys looked like they served with Popeye, only much more recently. The only indicator I got that their team had anything to do with a “foreign war” was that their captains name was “Hank.”

And Hank could, like the rest of his team, hit the snot out of a well pitched softball. I had the pleasure of observing a few of the balls as they began their lonely flight deep into right center or right over Doug’s head or right between short and third, and I could hear the wind slice through the stitching of the ball.

What have you. They hit the ball a lot. Sometimes we caught the balls (Bricker standing on the plate whispering “catch it catch it catch it catch it”), sometimes they went by (Bricker standing on the plate whispering “don’t….tell…shhhh…”). Sometimes we did something heroic (Tim grabs a mouthful of gravel in a full force dive towards first base to get the galloping veteran out), other times we cursed under our breath (Keith in right center). After a long fly ball that would certainly tally their sixth run, Doug just walked off the field and got a beer. The play wasn’t over but Doug was done.

However, when the B-Squad batted, hits and runs were tallied. Zin didn’t swing for the fences and got on base. Brad stretched his hitting streak out another game. Wein got a hit. Dave-O got a hit. Keith even scored the first gravel-rich wound in some base running magic. There may have been some other notable offensive plays. Hell, we got three runs! Much improvement from our last outing, with the notable exception of Bricker’s double strike out—an exact replica of last game’s terrific performance.

We in the B-Squad take the good and the bad in this world and grill it in our own special Italian sausage mixture, placing a delicate fried egg and some American cheese on top of it. And then we eat the good and the bad, chewing fast and furious to break the compound down, to mix up the experience in our great collective mouth, to change the texture and spread the flavors across our taste buds. We wash the good and the bad down with beer, which is almost always good. We look around for a moment to observe our friends talking, perhaps singing a polka song or watching a Twins game, and we decide that no matter the size of the good and the bad, our hunger will never be satisfied for this sandwich.

Latin Cape Man. At long last, the honored cape is in the possession of someone who knows the difference between the way a Roman emperor, a Greek God, and Superman would wear such a garment. Dave-O narrowly beat out a number of rivals to earn a week worth of cape opportunities. Hopefully Dave will take a cue from Keith and wear it around the neighborhood and down to the SA to get smokes. You’ll never be carded in a cape, Dave! Congratulations.