Hey, hey. Good to have you back. Sorry for not posting yesterday (no computer access). The Cubs continue to disgust me, and continue to show how valuable Aramis Ramirez is to their team. Everyone knew that the guy would be missed, but my goodness! This is getting ridiculous. Now I know that no one would ever compare Aramis to let's say...Pujols, or A-Rod, but when you take him out of your lineup, it hurts HIS team just as bad as their respective teams. The Yankees didn't start winning until Alex Rodriguez returned from hip surgery, and if you took Albert Pujols from the Cardinals, they would fall flat on their faces as well, even with Matt Holliday/Mark DeRosa. When you take your star player out of the equation, not only does it effect his position/spot in the order, it trickles down to every player on that 25 man roster. And that's exactly what is happening to the Cubs. Hopefully A-Ram can return from this cortisone shot and have a productive final 7-8 weeks while not hurting himself for the future. We'll see...
Another pedestrian win for my softball team last night in the first round of the playoffs. We extended our winning streak to eight games in a row by beating The Score 22-7 in five innings (slaughter rule), and improved our record to (9-2) overall. I had a terrible game offensively (0 for 3, RBI), but I'll take the win. I must admit that we felt disrespected by only getting the #3 seed in the tournament after beating the #1 seeded team (Jack FM) head to head, so I guess we kind of took it out on the #2 seeded Score guys. Jack FM ended up losing in their first round game to The Mix, so I guess all is well that ends well. It'll be the #4 seeded Mix vs. us in the championship game next week. We beat The Mix pretty handily in our regular season match-up with them, but as your Chicago Cubs know far too well, regular season victories mean very little come playoff time. Whatever happens, it's been the most fun that I've had on a softball team in all of the years that I've played.
I want to kind of tie the Chicago Cubs and my experience with softball together a little bit. (I'm well aware that this sounds meatballish already...but PLEASE hear me out). I'm going to tell you about a certain occurrence that seems to take place all of the time in the world of sports. You never know when it's actually going to happen, or to whom, but it happens repeatedly whether you're talking about professional athletes or a stupid radio softball league. I can't take credit for the title (it's HIGHLY debated between my friends Herb Lawrence and Thomas Hall on who DOES deserve the credit), but I GUARANTEE that you reading this will add this little gem of a saying to your vocabulary IMMEDIATELY (if you haven't already).
It's a little thing that we like to call T.B.S.
Yes. T.B.S. (Tight Booty Syndrome). Very funny (I DID come up with that). What causes T.B.S.? No one knows, but it's there. It's DEFINITELY there. The 2008 Chicago Cubs were coming off of a playoff berth in 2007 in which they were embarrassingly swept by the Arizona Diamondbacks in three games. So they went out there and took it to their opponents, running the gauntlet on the National League that season by building a big division cushion in the first half, landing an NL record 8 players on the All-Star team, and coasting their way to a league leading 97 wins and home field advantage throughout the playoffs. When they got to October however, instead of being that loose, relaxed team from the regular season that always seemed to hit with men on base, and didn't get flustered when a guy made an error or walked somebody, they inexplicably reverted back to that playoff team of '07. They started gripping the bats, booting the ball around the field, and walking guys left and right. That team suffered from one of the WORST cases of T.B.S. that I've EVER seen!
It happens on smaller levels too. I played on The Score softball team for the last three seasons. When I left the station before the beginning of this season, I joined my current team. The main difference from the team that I play on now, and my friends/former teammates on The Score team is simply ATTITUDE. Softball (like any other sport) is FUN. It's a game played outdoors, with your friends, in the summertime. What's more fun than that? What happens when you take something that is fun and turn it into something that is too serious? I'll tell you what happens...T.B.S. When I played on The Score team, I found myself (a guy that doesn't take ANYTHING that seriously) getting caught up in their over seriousness of the game, to the point that it effected MY play on the field. I would make stupid errors that I've never made before, and I would grip the bat too tight in key situations. In the regular season we were fine. We'd relax, have fun, and just rely on our talent (which wasn't much, but we're playing in a "radio" softball league). So of course, we would coast through the regular season, but come playoff time, when the games mattered and money was on the line...dead fish. Why? Pressure bursts pipes when you care too much.
With my current team, we set the tone early-on that we were just going to play loose and have fun (as you should in a stupid rec-league softball season). I remember getting swept in a double header our second and third games of the season dropping our record to (1-2). At the bar after the game, we decided that instead of getting on each other and taking this league so seriously, we were going to take more of the "Manny" approach. There's a reason why Manny is so clutch in the playoffs. He doesn't care. I know that it bothers a lot of people when you tell them that a millionaire athlete doesn't care, but Manny Ramirez doesn't care, and that's part of the reason why he's so successful. When a player just relaxes and relies on his natural abilities, he's at his absolute best. It's the old baseball cliche' of "not thinking too much." We adapted that little philosophy to our softball team, and we haven't lost since.
I'm good friends with a lot of the players on The Score softball team, and know all of them very well. They of course were doing a lot of talking before the game about how we were just a speed bump between them and the championship game and that was fine. I have no problem with a little trash talk (even if it is about something as nerdy as a radio softball league), but even with the fact that they had an identical record as us, and had actually beaten us in the regular season, there was NO doubt in my mind that we were going to win the game. Why? Because while they were constantly talking about the game on facebook, we were doing other things like: watching TV, drinking, talking to members of the opposite sex...you know, NOT thinking about the game. We were ACTUALLY relaxed and loose, instead of just TALKING about being relaxed/loose.
We were behind 5-2 heading into the second inning of the game after a couple of un-characteristic errors by our defense. They of course started taunting us by saying that "we were nervous" and "scared." Instead of letting the pressure "burst our pipes," we produced a diamond from all of that pressure and scored five runs in the second making the score 7-5 heading into the bottom of the inning. It was then that I KNEW that their inevitable T.B.S. would set in like it had in the three previous seasons that I played with that group of individuals. They quietly went down in order 1-2-3, and we responded with seven more runs on the board in the 3rd blowing the game wide open and silencing all of the fake confidence from that side of the field in the process. The noise from all of the simultaneous heads dropping was deafening.
I'm not sure if the current Cubs/Score team will always have T.B.S. come playoff time, or if that is something that can be cured. I just know that when you don't care, and don't take things too seriously, stuff always seems to work out. Just ask Manny.
Hit me up on facebook or in the comments section of this blog. Right now I'm listening to "Midsummer Classic" by Sundowner. Drinks of choice: coffee.
Later.
Webby
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