Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

We’re off to the Oregon coast for spring break. Internet access will be sketchy to non-existent, as the place we’re staying has no phones or TVs in the rooms, and they kind of scorn you if you use the guest phone in the office to plug in your laptop.  Have a great week, everyone!

I was out running one night last week - a different route than I usually do, as I was combining the run with an errand - and the route took me through a park where I played softball in the early 80s.  A team was out there practicing, and I heard that unmistakable “ping” that happens when an aluminum bat makes contact. Though I don’t play softball any more (a circumstance that I’ll cover in a bit), I got this itch, like they say about people that have lost a limb.

I played on softball teams for quite a few years after graduating from college, mostly associated with firms I worked for.  Not that I was especially good at it; I had a barely average arm and couldn’t hit for distance, but I COULD run pretty fast, and in the leagues I played in, that was usually more than good enough.

By the late 80s, however, I wasn’t playing.  My employer didn’t sponsor a team, I had turned 40 and was happy enough with my other physical activities - running, bicycling, skiing.  Then a guy who was painting our house said he had a team that was short a couple players, and asked if I’d be interested in filling in for a couple of games. 

The “couple of games” stretched out to 5 or 6 years.  The team was comprised of a bunch of guys in their late 20s, and I was kind of flattered to be able to hang with them as a player.  By 1997, however, I was still making the occasional spectacular catch in the outfield, but increasingly those were plays that would have been routine outs a decade previously.  I was being platooned more, and they started using me as a pitcher now & then.  Basically, I was a geezer-in-training.

Then one game night I arrived at the park a bit late from work and had to take the field without a real good warmup.  We were playing a team from Microsoft, and I have to say that they were just as rabidly competitive playing softball as they are in business.  I was playing in right field, and someone hit a fly well over my head.  I turned and tore off after it, and after about 5 strides felt a rip in my hamstring like someone had taken a machete to it.  I tried to stretch it and walk it off, but it persisted, and started to stiffen.

The coach finally decided I was useless in the outfield, and brought me in to pitch.  I got through a couple innings in workmanlike fashion and was feeling pretty good about it when a hitter smacked a screaming line drive right back at me.  I had just enough time to get my right hand (the ungloved one) up to protect myself, and the ball smashed into it below the pinkie finger.  I was miserable with pain, and took a seat on the bench for an inning, leaving us with 9 players instead of the usual 10.

I hated letting everyone down, and convinced myself that I was feeling better.  The coach said I could play catcher for the rest of the game, so I went out to warm up the new pitcher.  I caught the first pitch, pulled it out of my glove and threw it back with my injured hand.  It just exploded in pain, and I felt a couple clicks as it came to rest.  I decided that I could get through the game by rolling the ball back after each pitch, but the ump told me to just catch the ball and he’d throw it back to the pitcher, and that’s how I finished the game - a catcher for christ’s sake, with one good leg and one good arm.

After the game the coach drove me to an emergency room, where xrays confirmed I had crushed the metacarpal leading to my pinkie.  They numbed me up, set the bone and placed a couple pins through them.  I was sentenced to 5 weeks with a cast and splint, and my season was finished.  My hamstring was an ugly dark bruise for a week or so, but I could actually jog on it after 2 or 3 days. It’s not easy, however, to make a living in the computer industry with only one hand to type and none that can work a mouse.

So, that’s how my softball career ended in one hellacious night - no extended Cal Ripken season-long farewell. I haven’t played softball since, except for a little backyard horseplay, and I’m mostly happy not to be chasing around to suburban ballparks on nice summer nights.  Still, there are those moments when I see people practicing or playing, and I get a rush of muscle memory, and a little tingle as I imagine myself scooping up a grounder and coming up throwing.  It passes, though, and I jog on into the night.

I guess it’s about time we had an enemy in Iraq.  Makes it feel like a war, finally.  While it’s tempting to ascribe the recent uprising and coalescing of shiites and sunnis to an ignorance and hubris permeating the Bush administration, this article from the Guardian posits that the administration may be eliciting the resistance on purpose:

Make no mistake: this is not the “civil war” that Washington has been predicting will break out between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds. Rather, it is a war provoked by the US occupation authority and waged by its forces against the growing number of Shia who support Moqtada al-Sadr.

On the surface, this chain of events is mystifying. With the so-called Sunni triangle in flames after the gruesome Falluja attacks, why is Bremer pushing the comparatively calm Shia south into battle?

Here’s one possible answer: Washington has given up on its plans to hand over power to an interim Iraqi government on June 30, and is creating the chaos it needs to declare the handover impossible. A continued occupation will be bad news for George Bush on the campaign trail, but not as bad as if the hand-over happens and the country erupts, an increasingly likely scenario given the widespread rejection of the legitimacy of the interim constitution and the US- appointed governing council.

While this gives the administration credit for more strategic intelligence than one would like, it’s not implausible that a war whose buildup and execution was a purely political exercise would be extended and exacerbated as a campaign tactic as well.  But it still seems to be an acknowledgement that our two choices are to leave now in failure, or leave later in failure.

Well, I’m on the road again, another week in Milwaukee. One saving grace is the electronic arrangement in the picture below. I was an early adopter of hard disk-based mp3, and bought the Archos Recorder 20. It’s a behemoth by iPod standards, but the 20gb  hard disk still has plenty of room, even though I rip music at a higher bitrate (192) for enhanced sound quality.  The speakers shown are a sweet addition - from Creative labs.  They’re VERY petite and deliver terrific sound.  They pack up into a padded case that can be hauled easily in a briefcase.  Now playing?  Santana’s ‘Caravanserai’ album, which I ripped from my 70s-vintage vinyl.

Saturday was a terrific day here in Seattle. I met up with some guys from a Yahoo group and we paddled from West Seattle across Puget Sound to Blake Island, a marine park on the west side of the Sound near Bremerton. As you can see from the picture, the often turbulent Sound was as smooth as glass as we headed west. The Olympic Mountains loom in the distance.  Seals spy-hopped us as we progressed, and a nesting pair of bald eagles entertained us with their peculiar, high-pitched conversation that sounds like whistling.  The weather held for the return trip, though there was a little bit of chop.  Total distance was 6 - 7 miles, not a lot, but quite enough for my first outing of the year. 

My boat has a tendency to want to wander, or “weathercock”, from left to right, and this was very pronounced on the return trip yesterday.  In fact, I felt like the whole 3-mile crossing was one-armed as I fought the bow back to the left constantly.  I could install a rudder to cure this, or something called a “skeg”, which is a miniature centerboard-sort of thing that can be lowered from the hull when needed and is not as clunky - or heavy - as a rudder. 

It was also my first opportunity to use my new carbon-fiber paddle.  It’s super light and a joy to use.