a real (de)feat

Tonight, Salt Lake's finest B-League men's recreational softball team, the Dirty Sox, attempt to complete a perfect season.

Dreadfully perfect.

This evening marks the last game of the summer season and so far, we remain defeated. That's not a typo. We have yet to win one game. Seriously.

Here's the real slap in the face: all of us are between 24 and 30-ish; for the most part, we're healthy, reasonably fit, quasi-coordinated, lean, fast, dashing, handsome, brilliant and gainfully employed. We play teams filled with men deep into their 40s, who wear braces on sundry joints, swing $300 aluminum bats (mine cost $17; I know nothing about it other than it's green) and slowly move their heavy sand-bag torsos like barges across the basepath, their man-boobs and preggers-style guts doing the Truffle Shuffle as they beat us into submission. Homerun after fucking homerun.

Homeruns. That's how they do it, well that and the fact that on a good night, we may average five defensive errors while hitting directly to all of their fielders three times each. To prevent slaughters, the league created a rule to assist weaklings like us: a team is only allowed one homerun per inning. Anything else over the fence is an automatic out. While it's touching that the league officials care and all, simple math dictates that one homerun per inning (opponents) rules out over one homerun every third game (Dirty Sox).

Tonight we have the opportunity to do something special. We can win and salvage that last string of self dignity, or rip it in half, drink ourselves into a bloody heap and pretend the whole thing never happened.

Well, until Fall league starts in a few weeks.