Failure to fail (’cause sometimes winning is too much)

Remember that movie “White Men Can’t Jump?” Rosie Perez broke up with Woody Harrelson and for some reason he was really upset about it. Woody reflected upon the break up by saying “Sometimes when you win, you really lose. And sometimes when you lose, you really win.” Not only does that apply to breaking up with Rosie Perez, it can also be used to describe rec league softball.

In the city which I play softball, there are about 50 teams a night. Since the teams represent a wide range of talent (über competitive tournament squads to church-sponsored rookie teams), the league is broken up into divisions of six teams. The good teams play against the good teams. The bad teams play against bad teams. Every division winner is crowned “champion” and wins a t-shirt at the end of the season (and now you know my motivation for playing).

At the start of every season, each team plays what’s called a ‘classification game.’ The results of that game determine which division you’ll play in. My Tuesday team has been around a long time and we’re in the upper-third divisions of the city. When a new team comes into the league, they play against us. If they win, they get put in our division. If they lose by a handful of runs, they’re in a division lower. And if we completely destroy them, they’ll get put in the bottom barrel with all the other newbies. My Thursday team isn’t quite as established. We haven’t been around as long as the Tuesday squad and have nowhere near as many championships. It feels like that team is in a perpetual state of rebuilding because we have three or four new guys every single season.

Last season’s classification game we played against one of the upper echelon teams. Our opponent was secure in their seeding and genuinely disinterested in the game. Because they put forth less effort than the screenwriters of “Spider-Man 3,” we beat them rather handily…and were placed in the highest division I ever played in. I found it ironic that the Thursday team was ranked higher than my Tuesday team even though Tuesday had considerably more talent. But that was the ruling of the commissioner and we went on to have a horrendous season. We won only two games and lost eight–all by deficits larger than the national debt.

After the season, our four best players left and were replaced by players who were all significant downgrades. The collection of ‘talent’ on our team was easily the worst I’ve ever played on. We had no third baseman. No real power hitters. Zero speed in the outfield. Oh, and two guys who hadn’t played slow pitch in a really, really long time.

I knew the only way we wouldn’t lose by ten runs on a weekly basis was if we moved into one of the bottom divisions–maybe even the bottom division. Even then I figure we wouldn’t have a chance at a championship–but at least we could arrive at the field without fear of losing to the slaughter rule. I knew the only way we would drop to a lower division would be to lose the classification game. Not only lose, we had to be thoroughly beaten and embarrassed.

“What I really want is to get shutout,” I told my teammates. Under normal circumstances, that wouldn’t be a problem–we were that bad. However, I couldn’t shake the memory of our previous classification game. If the team we played against didn’t care or try, there’s a good chance the final score might look competitive…and we would get placed in a high division.

So I collaborate with my two co-captains–pretty much the only three guys on the team who had a chance to get a hit. We agreed–made a pact–that none of us would do significant damage with the bat. If by chance, somehow the game was close and we were scoring runs, we would do whatever was in our power to make outs. Not that the three of us are elite superstars who dominate anyway–we just agreed not come through in the clutch (you know, Aroid-style).

Three innings into the game and I knew I didn’t hafta worry about accidentally winning the game. We were chasing double-digit runs (a 15-run deficit is an automatic mercy) and only mustered a couple hits. We didn’t even hafta try to suck–we were terrible naturally. Our first baseman dropped three throws from the shortstop. Our right fielder missed a couple flyballs. And perhaps most importantly, we didn’t score a run.

That’s when I started to get giddy. Before the game I joked about getting shutout, but didn’t think it was possible. Shutouts are unheard of in a game where the final score is usually 20-15. Let’s be honest here: it’s slow pitch softball. You’d hafta be completely void of any talent whatsoever to miss an eight-inch ball tossed 12 feet in the air at 15 miles per hour. Yet there we were, sucking like no slow pitch team has ever sucked before. Every few years I’ll play in a game where a team scores less than four runs but I’ve never seen a shutout before.

In the bottom half of the fifth inning, we were losing by 16 runs. Since we were the home team, we had our “last at-bats” and one chance to score two runs to keep the game going. Defeat was in our grasp and I was pretty happy. Our first batter got out. The second hitter hit lucked his way to first base on a fielding error. The next batter got out and it was my turn to hit.

I was certainly aware of the situation. All I needed to do was pop out and we would witness history: the first-ever shut out in slow pitch softball (unofficially according to me). I swung high hard because I wanted it to look real; when the ball left my bat, I thought I did a good job. But as I watched the centerfielder backpedaled, I knew something was wrong. Maybe the ball caught wind. Maybe it was the hardest ball I’ve ever hit. All I know is as I trotted to first base I watched the ball sail over the centerfielder’s head.

I had no choice but to run hard around the bases (after all, I didn’t wanna look like I was trying to lose). I easily scored without a throw, hitting a two-run homer, ruining the shutout, and making the game go one inning further.

I’m not a power hitter and don’t pretend to be. Sure, I’ve hit home runs before–gappers between two outfielders account for the majority of my ‘homeruns.’ There was one time a big fat guy was playing in the deepest part of right field. I hit a weak, bloop single to right and he had to ‘run’ a hundred feet to the ball. I easily scored before he got there. But the point is, I’ve never hit the ball over the fence and certainly never planted one over an outfielder’s head. For me to do so was pretty remarkable.

Unfortunately for me–and the rest of the team–it came at a time when I was actually trying to get out. That’s right–I suck at sucking. I’m such a bad ballplayer I can’t even get out when I want to (which says a lot about the sorry state for my Thursday team). Maybe my bomb was a overdue birthday gift from the softball gods. But in all likelihood it was punishment for messing with the integrity of the game. My first legitimate homerun (and most likely my last) when I was tying to pop out.*

_{* The following week I hit a home run that’s more of my style–a groundball between two fat guys in the outfield.}