Softball museings

Another softball season in the books. This was my 7th seson on the team, and as one of the few original 2%ers left I have seen the team evolve over the years. When I started it was the wildlife gradstudent team organized by my boss Bob. They needed a couple more players so me and a couple of his other student workers got recruited. That 1st season we sucked. We won 2 games in the regular season- 1 by forfet and 1 actual victory. By some maricle we won acouple tournament games and so came in 3rd for that. I was only there for the 1st part of the summer season since I was working in west Texas, but from what I heard it went a little better. Then starting in the fall we started to click. My sophmore and junior year we won our division, got moved up to C and won again. After a few seasons of winning it became apparent we were going to have to move up to B league. Well bob decided to hand the team off to Becky who moved it to College Station from Bryan. The teams there were a lot more serious and that season was definatly not a shining moment for the 2%ers. This last season we moved back to Bryan, but there were not many teams playing so they combined leagues. We were playing some pretty good teams and only won a couple of games. It was frustrating since many of them were really close. Its still a nice excuse to do something fun on mondays, and is sort of the bright spot in the darkness of mondays for me. Its kinda funny what impact that team has had on me. Over the years I've played with a variety of people from profs who later were in charge of grants i applied for to peoples random neigbors when we needed a filler so we didnt have to forfit. I can count how many times someone will be talking about a grad student or prof in the dept and i'll be like hey, i played softball with them. Our team sort of has a reputation of taking the fun out of it and because of this there is actually a second team for people who don't like the way we play. Yeah we want to win, i mean really who doesnt. And we sometimes take it really seriously, back in the day we use to practice, get to the field 30 min early to warm up and that sort of thing but in the end it was incridibly fun and some of the greatest times i've had in my college life are related to that team. There was the monday nights spent at Harps, the dive bar down the street from the field where we use to go and celebrate our victories. The guys there actually knew us and sometimes wed show up and thered be pizzia ready to eat. We watched the Baseball playoffs and sitting in that bar we suffered through a Yankees elimination- i'll never forget watching bob roll on the floor in agony over that defeat. That post season was pretty bad between the Yankees and the Astros. The greatest 2% story though was this one game where we were up by one or two and going into the last inning. Manny out, this guy who for being big was pretty inept at playing softball. His typical batting showing was rather amusing wtih the other team way far back thinking hed crush the ball. Reality was if he actually hit the ball it wasnt going to far. Anyway he was the Nagle computer guy, and this one time up to bat Roel decided to speak on his level- if you hit I'll buy you a 128 memory stick (keep in mind this was spring of 2004 so that was fairly large). Well manny got up and hit the ball and acutally made it to first. After the inning bob was trying to decide if he should keep manny in right field (where no balls would head his way) or take him out and sub himself back in. Manny said he wanted to stay in so bob said he could. The batter got up and hit the ball straight for right field. I was in the dugout with Bob and Roel, and bob started freaking out. Roel just yelled out there if you catch it ill give you a 512. That got manny going and he ran over and caught that ball. I though bob was going to faint. Manny actually was able to make a play, apperently he just had to have the right motivation. We went on to win the game and Roel said that the memory stick was worth watching all the reactions to that catch.

We use to go out after practice either to a resturant and all eat together or sometimes go over to one of the guy's houses, cook food, and watch TV. The team was like my second family, people to eat with, hang around with, and play with. It seemes like over the last few seasons the team has changed. It use to be almost all wildlifers and a few friends of stuedents but now its a mix of wildlifers and people we picked up along the way. We have alot of fun, but i think sometimes the fact that we arent all around the same people day in and day out, sitting in the same building, and hearing the same stories has its effects. Then again ill be one of the outsiders next season, ENTO here I come