It had mostly to do with the green bat.
Having won the first game of a four-team playoff, we Bums were watching the other semifinal while chewing on some sandwiches. One team - let’s call them the Dingbats - was simply pulverizing the other, and their weapon of choice was a shiny spring-green number, about as subtle as Daisy Dukes’ shorts. Balls were rocketing into the far reaches of the park, as if the batters were swinging a small trampoline. Dazzled by velocity and distance, the opposing outfielders couldn’t seem to catch up to anything.

Our manager, Tom, took careful note of this shamrock shillelagh, and began the championship game by asking for an inspection from the umpires. Alas, the illegal-bat list offered no green. What’s more, Tom’s request did not sit well with the fine sensibilities of the Dingbats, who proceeded to talk smack the entire game.

Fortunately for me, I was already in left field, blissfully ignorant of all animosities. I was, however, quickly introduced to the power of the chlorophyll club. I thought I was giving the cleanup hitter plenty of respect, but the subsequent launch sent me sprinting full-out, back to the diamond and still I came up three feet short. I watched the ball bound across a sidewalk and into a bush next to the tennis courts, thinking, clearly, this field was designed pre-DeMarini.

For the rest of the game, our outfield played at what felt like an extreme depth anytime we spotted the lime lance - and our strategy worked beautifully. The Dingbats scored eight runs the first inning, followed by a total of four runs over the next six. The reason seemed pretty clear: having fallen in love with the power of the jade javelin, they were incapable of going back to the kind of dull, pedestrian line drives that win most softball games. Just pulling an analogy out of mid-air, it was like, oh, I don’t know_ like watching a great ballplayer who keeps injecting some sort of magic solution into his rear-end even after he tells Congress he’s not doing it.

Not that those Palmeiran fly balls were the easiest things to catch. I was playing one guy somewhere near La Jolla, and he still hit it twenty feet deeper. The angle to the ball was pretty routine, but by the time it came down it was fifty feet past the final bank of lights and resembled a tiny quarter moon. Noting my black T-shirt and dark Giants hat, one of my teammates said, "We weren’t even sure you were still out there."

So that’s how we beat the Mighty Morphin’ Dingbats, basking in the smell of their melting Icarus wings as we pocketed fly after Herculean fly. The next day we checked the list of illegal bats on the ASA website, and behold! The mint mallet. It had just been added, which explained why the umps didn’t have it that night. But we didn’t care, because that little $300 marvel of engineering certainly helped us a lot more than them.

Namby-Pamby Pitcher

Although I missed most of the smack talk, I was around for one altercation. Our pitcher, Joe, hit a hard liner up the middle. The ball smacked the pitcher and trickled behind for an infield single. As Joe stood on first, the pitcher gave him a menacing glare and said, "It’s your turn next."

I couldn’t quite believe my ears. A payback threat for a line drive up the middle? Besides being a rather flattering overestimation of Joe’s bat control, it was about the most pathetic thing I had ever heard.

He also picked a bad day for it, because Joe had suddenly taken on the glove prowess of Greg Maddux. Two innings later, when the payback liner finally arrived (intended or unintended), Joe knocked it down and made the play to second, setting off a joyous volley of invectives from his left fielder.

"That’s how a REAL pitcher plays ball, baby!"

That and all the other smack talk was kind of a shame, though, because I haven’t seen a better-played game, from both sides, in ages. The game ended, in fact, on two phenomenal plays behind second by our shortstop, Tony.

Working With What You Got

A couple of other players, James and Mace, provided inspiration of another sort, fighting through personal struggles to help out the team.

James was having some awful vision problems in right, letting two long drives get past him in the first inning. But he had enough focus (and useful amnesia) to come up the next inning and stroke a two-run homer, putting us right back in the game. Mace’s problem was an entire season of sketchy hitting, composed mostly of fly balls to left. But he surprised us, early on, by slicing a hard liner through the right side. As we were jogging to the outfield, I said, "Hey, I didn’t know you could do that."

"I could," he said. "Before this season, anyway."

"Well, you know, when you’re popping out, it’s because you’re lunging. The nice thing about going to the right side is that it forces you to stay back a little."

Mace followed by hitting another liner through the right side, then followed that with a liner over the third baseman. Which goes to show, it’s never too late - even in the last game of the season - to make an adjustment and find a way to contribute.

Playing Tired

I spent the ten hours preceding the game staining a deck in 80-degree heat. I told my boss, "I am completely exhausted - which probably means I’ll play great tonight."

This supposition came from years of study. I have always played well when tired, or even when I was down with a virus. It could be that the tiredness makes me more relaxed - or that, when my muscles are sore, it also means that they’re loose.

My teammates certainly didn’t help my condition - I got on eight times, and they drove me home six. For an exhausted 43-year-old, that’s a hard day’s night.

And was it all worth it? Of course it was.