TOXIC BREW: A BIT OF BAD BLOOD BOILS IN BEWILDERING BLOW-OUT
THESE are the times that try human souls. The springtime slugger and the hail storm Daddy will, in this crisis of absences, shrink from the service of their team; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
And so it was that a lonely band of seven Pew’s Your Daddy players managed to run up a 5-0 lead against the amiable and fully staffed Brewmasters and later burned the Toasters for a 16-8 victory. The unlikely victory extended the Daddies’ winning streak to five.
It wasn’t exactly pretty, though.
When game time arrived on the sun-soaked Monumental Grounds the Daddies call home, the once-teeming ranks of Pewballers were embarrassingly thin. Despite a flurry of text messages, cell phone calls and loud cursing, the Daddies were hopelessly scattered across the globe. And, to make matters worse, two potential players were running late because they never switched to Daylight Savings Time.
Deeply afraid of being known as “That Team,” the skeleton crew in black and white saw little choice but to step up to the plate. They offered the Brewmaster’s the home team’s normal prerogative of last ups with the hopes that the two stragglers would find the Washington Monument before the Daddies had to take the field.
That plan failed. Three of the Daddies’ top four batters got out. The bright side was that the Daddies went through more than half the batting order. But the very dark side for the Vader Wearers was that they would now have to defend against the Brewmasters’ best hitters while leaving gaps in the field big enough that not even Alec “Crazy Legs” Tyson could cover them.
On top of that, many of the Daddies were playing out of position. Manager Richard “Last Stop” Auxier gave up his third base post to play in the outfield, alongside Tyson and Melissa “Mambo” Monbouquette, normally a catcher. Dan “El Capitan” Vock left the mound for first base, while lefty Danny “Wedge” Dougherty pitched the entire game. Elizabeth “E-Pod” Podrebarac and Ivan “Gray Beard” Sciupac rounded out the staff, playing second and third/short, respectively.
Mercifully, the Brewmasters missed the gaps and the Daddies preserved the 0-0 tie going into the second. The once-cheerful Brewers grew agitated in the dugout. The teeth-gnashing had only begun.
Vock started the inning for the Daddies with his first multibase hit of the year, reaching second. Monbouquette grounded out to first and Vock belatedly reached third with an awkward slide. But a botched throw made the effort moot and Vock, with strong encouragement from base coach Auxier, quickly got up and scored the Daddies’ first run. Yes, somehow, the seven-person crew was now winning.
Dougherty and Tyson added to the total when Podrebarac hit a triple, also her biggest hit of the season. She crossed the plate on a sacrifice fly from Sciupac. Auxier, who reached on a single, made it five when Vock, on his second at-bat of the inning, inexplicably hit a triple.
The good news kept on coming. As the Daddies were grabbing their gear to take the field, Zach “Zack Markovitz” Markovits and Annie “No Joke” Cloke finally finished their grueling journey from Chinatown to the Mall. Their addition meant the Daddies were only one short of a full squad of 10, meaning the only gap was extra space in the outfield.
The Daddies held solid. They didn’t allow a single run until the fourth inning. And, in the meantime, they were racking up the stats with four more runs in the third, including a home run (or triple???) from Sciupac.
If ever doubt poisoned the minds of the Pewsters, it probably came in the fourth inning. The Daddies went four up, three down and left Monbouquette stranded. Then the Brewmasters started hitting like a team that hadn’t lost in a month, putting four on the scoreboard.
The doubt, if ever there was one, vanished in the sixth. That’s when Pew’s Your Daddy tacked on six more insurance runs, including a round-tripper from Auxier. The rowdy skipper hit the long ball an inning after Tyson, his cubicle competitor, also went for a lap.
With the game safely in hand, the Daddies set off to make enemies.
Never mind that the Brewmasters humored the rag-tag group for nearly half an hour of extra batting practice. Never mind that the score was scorn enough. Never mind karma.
Nope. Enter Jeannette from the Block, the Daddies’ Super Fan who spends most of her time taunting Pew sluggers and reminding them not to shame their mothers. This time, she also directed her New York attitude at the opponents, reportedly using words that would shame her mother.
So when an honest disagreement surfaced, the Brewmasters were rather disagreeable. Somehow the Masters were an inning behind in their scorebook, and when the Daddies announced it was the bottom of the seventh — the last chance for the Hopped Up Hitters to eke out a comeback — the visitors could scarcely believe it.
A comparison of the scorebooks ensued*. The Daddies’ version, while generally well-maintained by Monbouquette, omitted several at-bats by the scorekeeper and captain because there was no back-up scorekeeper. Also, the book happened to be soaking wet with beer. But it did clearly show 21 outs, putting the game in the bottom of the seventh. The Brewmasters’ version of a scorebook appeared to be done in ball-point pen on the back of a piece of scrap paper, and even the scorekeeper admitted it was done “kinda half-assed by three different people.” The Brewmasters proposed another inning, just in case. The Daddies, who had all played the entire game, declined.
With much consternation and grumbling, the Brewmasters finally relented. With one out left, their hitter smacked a line drive that the Daddies easily caught. But the Brewers’ runner on third jumped the gun and headed for home. Before he got back to third, Auxier tagged him out. Thus, the game ended on a double play, and not a particularly graceful one at that.
Now, the Daddies have had lapses of sportsmanship on occasion. And they’ve suffered some ridiculous defeats (see the McNamee Clients, aka Balco Bombers, now the league’s top team). But they have never left the field without a post-game line-up of high fives. The Brewmasters were not in much of a conciliatory mood, though, and only when the whole Daddies team walked in single file to their sideline did the long-standing tradition occur.
So much for glory.
* League rules say the home team’s scorebook controls. But league rules say a lot of things that don’t ever happen on the Mall.