I’m gonna tell two stories about Saturday’s game against the Somerville Expos. One is made up, the other is true. Can you guess which one is which?
I went through my typical post-game ritual. Met my fellow outfielders behind second base, did a jiggety little handshake, untucked my jersey, flipped my cap backward, and jogged toward the mound where the rest of my team waited to give daps all around. We won.
Rewind to the third inning. I wiped away rivers of sweat streaming down my face and watched our second baseman, Kurt Abbot, take strike three right down the pipe to end the inning. The bases were loaded. We were down by eight runs.
I looked around and saw clenched fists and red faces. Nobody wanted to play defense. Especially not Kurt, whose emphatic “FUCK!” could be heard from New Hampshire where the helmet he spiked is probably still rolling. Nonetheless, we trotted out there.
Fast forward to the fifth inning. We whittled the lead down to five. The bases were loaded again and Ben Grieve stood in the box. His eyes focused on Miguel Batista, the pitcher for the Expos who just subbed into the game for Mike Maddux. Batista reached back and fired a seed to Grieve who watched it hiss by for strike one. He stepped out of the box, spit towards the mound, and sent dirt cascading from his cleat into the air with the tap of his bat.
The second pitch. It was another screaming fastball. Benny planted his foot and let it rip. The ball went flying back into the woods. Keys jingled behind the backstop as spectators scrambled to peer down the hill making sure it wasn’t their car that just got a fresh crater from baseball’s not-so-dazzling meteor shower.
The third pitch from Batista was a knee-buckling curve that Benny waved at and knicked. Everyone’s face pressed against the fence. We screamed encouraging words that I’m sure Ben didn’t hear, bobbing up and down in anticipation of the fourth pitch.
Batista unloaded his third fastball of the at-bat and Benny barreled that sucker up like a brewer. The sound off the bat was different. We all knew it was gone, even Batista who didn’t even look at it sail over the fence at Cunningham Park. He just stuck his glove up in defeat, asking the umpire for a new baseball. It was 8-7 but we were bound to win with that type of momentum shift, and we took the lead in the sixth inning when Ryan Christenson hit a two-run double.The score didn’t change after that, and that’s how my cap turned backward.
Ready for the second story? Okay, here it is. Elon Musk reached out to Joe O’Hara and asked if the A’s and Expos would be interested in playing a Yawkey League baseball game at SpaceX’s new state-of-the-art, zero-gravity sports facility. Thanks to these blogs, he’s been keeping up to date with our season. Anyways, Joe said yes (obviously) and we were flown out in a Tesla Jet to a desert in Utah. For one hour, we got to play a game in which everybody hit 700-foot nukes. We decided to end the game in a tie after the first inning. The score was 105 to 105.
Okay, any guesses for the real story?! They’re both made up. Every player named in the first story was on the 1998 Oakland A’s or Montreal Expos roster, and Elon Musk has better uses for his time. The real story is pretty dull. The A’s slaughter ruled the Expos 19-0 in five innings. George Breslin threw a no-hitter in his hometown, Milton, MA. I could probably add some details in there that would spice it up, but it’d still be boring. I bet you thought you knew which one was real, right? Was it because I told you one of them was true? Come on guys, don’t believe everything you read online ;). (If you're reading this, I love you.)
On a real note, congrats to my boy Brezzy. The dude is a fucking competitor and I’m grateful I get to suit up with him. Here’s what he had to say about his performance.
Stats from the game:
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