First-ever "wiffleball tournament"

Dressed like this, we deserved to win!

Where to begin? We entered this Chico tournament with absolutely no idea what to expect. We'd occasionally played with the evil "other ball," but only for fun and/or as a 2-3 minute break from our better, usual ball. We'd never been competitive with the ball, simply because we don't like balls that curve FOR us. In any event, we weren't about to be able to change the equipment used in this tournament, so we decided to wing it and simply see what happened. Who knows, maybe we'd be good!

Our first game was against a group of old guys, one of which wrote for the local paper and a few days earlier had written a blistering rant on how he was going to dominate with his unbelievably fast heater. We started salivating, because this league is at the core a fastball-hitting team. We came out rusty, and banged out only a couple singles, but we found out right away that we were the better team. Darnell walked three batters and then gave up a fluke (and believe me, after seeing the guy's swing, you'd admit it was too) grandslam. Let the bodies hit the floor, we were done for that game.

John Deatrick, the one guy of all of us there who could consistently throw strikes, decided at the last second, for one reason or another, to not pitch that first game. So Darnell had to take the hill and took the blame for the loss. Oddly enough, John was gung-ho to pitch our second game, and we won that one over a group of assholes who took the game way too seriously. They complained about Deatrick "throwing too hard" and then decided to "give us a taste of our own medicine." They then proceeded to walk a bunch of guys and essentially handed the game to us. Scottie Ballgame was at the field for the third game and all of the sudden, we were by far the best team there. We walked all over the next team, with Scott throwing amazing stuff, and then won our last game against of the day in equally dominating fashion. However, we didn't make the "playoffs," despite our 3-1 record on the day because we didn't score as many runs as another team that went 3-1. Nevermind that we gave up FAR fewer runs. So we watched the playoffs, pissed off while a group of nobodies swung and missed repeatedly at stuff we'd be sending to next Thursday. Were we bitter? You betcher ass.

Dave Cain was on the eventual championship team and to say he carried his team would be a gross understatement. Dave's team won both their games 1-0. In both games, Dave hit a leadoff homerun. They weren't scored upon not because their pitcher was that good; the batters were simply that bad. If only Deatrick nutted up and pitched that first game.