Thursday, July 9, 2009

Jr.'s birthday cake derails the Unicorns

In case you did not hear the story, a fellow server at Big Bowl on Monday night had a birthday. Paige graciously brought an incredible ice cream cake from Jewel. Unbeknown to Ichiro, Jr. (the birthday boy) had a tooth ache and could not completely appreciate the delicacy. This is where coach T-Bear stepped in and generously donated his bottomless stomach and picked up the slack for Jr. and the rest of the staff and ate half the cake by himself.

There is an old saying in baseball that a team takes on the personality of it's coach and this was definitely evident in the game yesterday. The Unicorns played collectively as if they were in a food coma. The unicorns looked like they would rather be napping on a couch than playing ball yesterday.

Confusion reigned from the beginning as we were playing a double header at field 3, then a triple header at Wrigley Field, then half a game at field 3 and the other half at field 10, then four innings at Fenway Park in Boston and then getting on a concord jet back to Chicago to play the final 3 innnings at field 3. The situation was completely fluid and changing by the hour. Finally, they settled on a single game at field 10 and an email was sent that no one got at 5:29 pm. Fortunately, T-Bear had to relieve himself of some of Jr.'s cake and had to take a dump before the game and stumbled upon the Unicorns "in the know" at field 10 and was able to correspond to other in the dark ones of the change. Somehow, in the confusion, JIT got an email completely different than anyone else that said "come two hours late and help finish beer." Sorry about the craziness JIT. I think the email that no one got also said "let's look alive out there." We definitely did not get that memo.

Since we were playing an undefeated team, I was hoping that they might be rusty too for not having played for a month and we could surprise them early. Well, we did surprise them early by really sucking. We surprised them to the tune of four gift runs in the first thanks to four errors by our comatose defense. Another gift run was given in the next inning thanks to Legend who actually pulled a reclining comfy chair to 3B and could not unrecline in time and beat a runner to the bag who had three times the space to make up. Was Legend secretly at Big Bowl last night and helping me eat that cake?

Ironically, the best player in the field last night was the one directly responsible for our collective slumber. Paige played like a star at 2B. Mary also played well. She was not as sharp as we are used too, but still pitched good enough to win on a team that could hit worth a damn. We also surprised CNA by trying to hit high pitch after high pitch and grounding out and popping out all game. I put myself at 9th place because I thought having me near Habby would pay big benefits as we have reliably got on base. Not tonight, as king sleepy grounded out to 2nd, hit a ball Shaquille O'Neal would have had trouble with for the only Unicorn RBI, and popped out his last time only to be miraculously not pop out as somehow the ball landed. The pop out would have been the last out of the game. I gave CNA a 20$ gift to make an error or not try and catch a ball by me if it was going to be the last out. This is because I cry when I make the last out and did not want to make a fool out of myself in front of the team (at least anymore than I already have). This greasing of CNA by the Coach allowed me to reach 1st and allowed a more mature person to make the last out.

It was good to see Mr. Brady starting his usual shenanigans last night. We know with him that once he starts thing just snowball. Big Red and Legend will be making out by next week, just you wait. Teams playing us in the future have taken notice of our poor performance last night. Their message to the Unicorns is let Coach T-Bear eat cake.