amkean pronunciation

Today I'm back in the school year routine, so those of you frustrated with my lack of recent posts can relax and scale back on your meds again.

What a summer, too. Prince was an immense highlight, but Prince was topped by Monkey Knife Fight's softball championship on Wednesday night.

We've had a core group of players together for what, seven or eight seasons? We've been in several championship games during this time, but always lose, usually with me making the last out. Prior to this year, though, all of our championship games were local to Brackett Park. The CSC softball leagues for each night of the week are divided among several mpls parks. The level of play is tiered at the different parks, and Brackett is supposed to be a lower level of play. We've amassed a big winning record playing there. One spring season we played solely at the U of M fields, and we lost at least as much as we won and a team member accused an ump of being drunk. So we'd failed at being Brackett Park champions several times, playing against teams with d-bag shortstops mostly.

They changed the format this year, so that playoffs lead up to a championship tournament consisting of top seeds from each of the parks. We did well enough at Brackett this summer that we went to the playoffs and won a game (which I wasn't there for) to get to the single-elimination tournament. We got to the Super Six tournament in the spring, and then graduation conflicted so I couldn't play and our team lost a close one in the first game playing shorthanded. We've played only about two games all season with a full complement of 10 players.

The summer tourney was a Supreme Seven tournament, and we were faced with three potential games. In the first game, we were fresh and playing well. J hit a grand slam, I hit a home run (after striking out swinging for the first time I can remember and getting booed by the other team for walking on three horrible pitches), and our whole team just rained down runs upon them.

Game Two. We were facing an undefeated team who had a bye to the second round of the tournament, and they were mostly in their early 20's, it seemed. They engaged in some annoying behavior. Their third baseman would be up to bat and would always take until he had one strike on him. But not only was he taking, he wasn't poised to bat; he'd be playing with his bat and bouncing around like Satchel Paige. As soon as he got a strike, he'd swing for the fences. There are no outfield fences at Brackett, but there were at the U fields on Wednesday, and misterfilo was the only person in any of our games who hit one over. Another player was called out running the basepaths and disputed the call, refusing to leave 3rd base. The captain came out to argue for five minutes, like the ump was going to change the call, and then the runner sat down and their bench booed. In the bottom of the 7th, we were nursing a one-run lead when one of their guy popped up behind home plate. K-rols made a diving catch to sit that dude down, and we won the game, leaving them to deal with their first loss of the year. TeamRolig was MVP of the night, with that catch and the automatic shortstop play of B-money. He had a ton of putouts. I made about 4-5 mistakes this game, and would have felt pretty shitty is we'd lost by one run. The slate was wiped clean, though.

Game three was against a fun, nice team who had been sitting waiting for their shot at the winner, having won their game way earlier. Their pitcher used to ump some games, and he hit a towering Dave Kingman fly that went straight up but somehow made it out to me at the fence. It was the highest ball I'd ever seen hit, by far. They were scoring runs, but we were, too, and we were keeping it close. We found ourselves with a one-run lead again as the visitors in the bottom of the seventh. We got two outs against them, and then a dude hit a shallow fly to left, and I charged in and only was able to trap it. I was really unhappy about it afterwards, because I could have caught it, and they tied the game on that play. We wouldn't have had the finish we did without it, so I guess it's more fitting that it ended the way it did. I was afraid that was it, but we did not allow the winning run and sent the game to extra (extree) innings. They have a college football-like playoff in the event of a tie during the tournament, so I was leading off in the top of the eighth with one out automatically against us and a baserunner on 2nd. Instead of grounding out to first or short, I actually got a base hit and what turned out to be the GWRBI. That was the only run we managed that half-inning, so it didn't look that good. The other team was too good to hold to only one run with a runner on 2nd already. Except for that their first batter lined hard back to MisterFilo, who turned and tossed it to Rolé to double up the runner, and Game Over. Celebration ensued. It was lucky, but not unearned.

The cool thing was that everyone contributed. The girls all hit hard. Mike was large filling in in left-center. Jana scored the winning run and did well fielding in right. We've had to get by with only three outfielders most games, and I don't think we would have won like that on Wednesday. You're allowed to have 6 guys/4 girls in the field, but we were 5/5, so there. The way it all came together was one of the best things ever. It was like the 1987 Twins, but I participated. I'm still spending gobs of time daydreaming about it.