Hey out there, all you Whirling Derverts
™! If you thought I was kidding when I said there would be weekly updates - if you thought "He won't ever do that. He has to know that no one cares about the travails of his stupid softball team. Even
he can't be that out of touch, can he?" - then you were super fucking wrong and kind of mean. I'm committed, man, and the fact that I'm posting an update after
this game just proves that this is happening weekly, come shine or rain, victory or
humiliating defeat, avid readership or scorn/indifference.
It was a beautiful day for softball, slightly overcast but warm, with a pleasant breeze that only fanned the white-hot flame that burns in the heart of every
Dervish. As we arrived at the complex, the weird "thwack" of juiced bats against balls made real what for the last 9 months had been only the subject of beautiful dreams (when we weren't dreaming about cops on all-fours chasing after dogs on two legs who are wearing ski masks and carrying bags of money while our grandparents look on - a favorite
Dervish dream): softball season was here.
The game started off pretty well, with both teams playing solid defense (often in short supply in softball leagues) and limiting scoring chances. One thing I'd like to note is that the A-Town Nugs loved to take walks, man. Growing up playing baseball, I must've heard the saying "A walk's as good as a hit" about 90 times per game. Every time a batter got to three balls, "A walk's as good as a hit" would be hurled at him ritualistically from every conceivable direction: his coach, his teammates, his parents, his teammates' parents, the teammate whose parents abandoned him's uncle. Planes would fly overhead, towing a banner that said "A walk's as good as a hit!!!" behind them. And all that was fine, because it's true. But this is rec-league softball, man. The ball is going 5.3 miles per hour, and you're 39 years old, and your glory days are already gone if they ever came at all. Who the fuck wants to walk in softball? The saying in softball should be "If you walk, you are a gigantic pussy". Everyone should chant it every time someone gets to three balls. If the ball is in your general vicinity, you have enough time to position your body so that it's perfect to hit. But in this case, these balls were like an inch off the plate. Swing the goddamn bat.
Oh, right, the game. So thanks to a nice surge in the bottom of the fifth inning, the score was 7-4
Dervishes. Life was good; it was time to bring it on home. Right here I am going to posit the existence of a
Dervishmobile just so that I can tell you that the wheels fell off of it in the top of the sixth. Then, in the top of the seventh, someone smashed the windows and stole our awesome
Dervish sound system. And by the end of the inning, people were looting it of all its semi-valuables and having sex with each other inside its hollow shell while a crazy homeless guy defecated on its hood. All of a sudden in the last two innings we couldn't play defense. We dropped popups, overthrew cutoff men, bobbled balls, let balls past us, and generally bungled every opportunity we had to get outs. We lost *expletive deleted*-8. Fine, 26-8. After being up 7-4 two innings earlier.
I was stunned. I was crushed. I needed answers. So after the game, the
Dervishes struggled through the throngs of upset groupies and compared notes. And we figured it out. It was so simple. You see, though the
Dervishes are cut from the manliest cloth in God's sweatshop, we are sensitive, too, like a swan or a clitoris. And it hit us collectively, in the top of the sixth, how meaningless softball really is amidst the world's suffering. When our first baseman dropped a popup, it turns out that he was tormented by thoughts of how skyrocketing oil prices are driving hardworking people into poverty. So he dropped a softball; big fucking deal. Our left-centerfielder overran a line drive, allowing the hitter to come all the way around and score. But it turns out that he was busy writing a poem about the effects of deforestation on third-world countries. No one can catch a ball while simultaneously rhyming "deforestation" with "the poorest nations", or "the tree" with "hug me", or "mudslide" with "sun-dried". Those multisyllabic rhymes need one's full attention. So: catch a ball, or talk about a serious issue facing our world? Which one would
you choose? I know I personally was troubled by the deadly stalemate between the Israelis and Palestinians when I flew out to left with runners on base. Sue me.
But after a long philosophical discussion about the nature of suffering and our obligation to help relieve it, we came to the nuanced conclusion that it is up to each of us to do what we can to help, but we cannot, in these efforts, sacrifice fully our obligation to actualize
our own happiness. We must help with one hand, and with the other reach for our own greatness. And what in life is greater than to be a
Whirling Dervish? So the
Dervishmobile is rolling once more. Next opponent: "The Unknowns". We can sympathize with them, because before last Sunday we too were unknowns,
even to ourselves.
Fin.
