The afternoon didn't start well.....
2:30pm - First came the realization that the Parks Department had inadvertantly made a clerical error and given our 7pm North Meadow Permit to another applicant....
That was followed by 1 1/2 hours of the commissioner begging and pleading for Parks to "make things right" and find us another field to play on (the toughest part, of course, was holding emotions in-check and not telling them what a bunch of incompetent a$$-holes they all are)......to their credit, they scoured the schedule for the entire island of Manhattan, even going so far as to call the heads of other leagues to see if they were using all of the fields they had permits for.
4:00pm - When they finally secured a field (Riverside #4 @ 103rd Street), the commish had to scramble to inform his own team (GA) , opponent (RRA/DBB) and umpires of the last-minute switch.....luckily all had the "go-with-the-flow" attitude and took the change in stride.
6:30pm - Upon arrival at the field, however, the teams were confronted with the prospect of breaking up a MASSIVE pick-up soccer game that was taking place in the outfield. Despite the best diplomatic efforts, the horde of incongruent players refused to vacate the premises....
Perhaps driven by the frustration of the previous 5 hours, the tension was ratcheted-up a bit when the commissioner decided to start taking batting practice with the soccer game still going on in the outfield.....a line-drive to centerfield that struck one of the footballers in the back did nothing to calm things down....as more and more players took their swings, the situation appeared to be headed in an ugly, downwardly-spiraling direction....
Meanwhile, our calm-headed ump (Louie) had the foresight to call the NYPD....a short time later two officers arrived and diffused the situation.....within a few minutes of their arrival the field was cleared. Let's play ball !!!
7:15pm - Fortunately the delayed start didn't have an effect on the Gensler bats as they jumped out to a 7-0 lead in the first inning.......taking advantage of the short porches in both left and right fields, there were homeruns and ground-rule-doubles galore. The offensive outburst was complemented by solid defense and pitching (no-hitter thru the first three innings). It all came to an end after five innings, and a 15-1 final score.
9:15pm - Recapping a Gensler route over pitchers of beer at Broadway Dive, just like old times .....the frustrations from earlier in the day seemed like a distant memory......It turned out to be a good day after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment