Roll Out The Tarp

One love to Roy "Snowblind" Tarpley, but that's not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to the rain that has now been falling on the city for 24 consecutive hours, and I'm wondering what effect it will have on the game Sunday.

Worst case scenario is that the rainy conditions awaken Francisco Dinosaurio from his beauty sleep, and that he'll hurriedly re-shape his goatee, throw back a cool pint of crazy sauce, and get back out there to show us how it's done ("it," in this case, being "what the queers are doing to the soil"). Failing that, though, we'll probably still be dodging puddles and playing station-to-station softball with a six-pound ball by the time 5:15 rolls around. I am not complaining about this -- it's better than not playing softball by a damn sight, and there's nothing like the tension of a low-scoring slow-pitch softball game. But the foul weather, and Field 5's drainage issues, reminds me of a moment from last year that I think was one of the most beautiful in Buttermilk history. Seriously: it's up there with me hurting myself in Year One, if not quite in the class of Jesse's Motorola-aided outfield play or last year's season-ending Alex/Ben collision in centerfield on the season's final putout.

I have no pictures of this moment -- Joel, if you have them, I think they'd make a great post -- but I'm talking about the day last year when we all spent the first thirty or forty minutes of softball running around with rakes and nasty sump-pumps and shovels like a bunch of hungover kibbutzniks (right down to my sister and me doing insulting Israeli accents) and grounds-kept a field that looked like a pasture of loose Bigfoot poo into semi-playability. The communal spirit of it, the primal joy of working with the soil, comrades of all sizes, shapes, colors and softball abilities laboring side-by-side... I'm kind of humming the "Internationale" right now just thinking about it.

But I'm still hoping it's sunny and hot tomorrow, and that the field will be viable by Sunday 4pm. Playing second base is hard enough without having to worry which side of the puddle you're going to position yourself on.