Don't give me this "ole" bullshit!

So I got a chance to get a glimpse of my future 30 years from now - that future being adult-league recreational softball. I play for my dad's team whenever I'm home for vacation. One the one hand, this is nice. It gets me outside during a time when I would happily sleep until two in the afternoon and then spend my evenings watching Simpsons reruns and eating cereal. However, it can also be incredibly depressing, because watching old men play softball is, for me, a better memento mori than any of those morbid Renaissance painters' perfectly detailed skulls. My dad played D-I soccer in college, and now he can barely run out a grounder to shortstop. The knowledge that someday my joints will degenerate into his is, to say the least, sobering.

Adult-league recreational softball is, in some ways, Little League for grown men. By age forty the baselines have shrunk back down to 60 feet, the umpires show up late to games, and you get tossed for wearing metal spikes. Just like at age 12, the big strong guys who can crush the ball and then waddle around the bases are the valuable ones, regardless of actual talent. This is, by anyone's account, some low-quality sports.

My dad's team got demoted to the "D" league over the spring. The "D" league is reserved for guys who have either a) had serious surgery on either their heart or knees at some point, b) played in high school and then didn't pick up a glove for 20 years, or c) used to be good before they gained 70 pounds. These are the guys who are one step above playing in a coed league, which is like signing away your right not to be called a queer at Mulleady's Pub for the rest of your life. What chaps my ass the most, though, is that my dad's team co-opted my intramural softball team's name from school (the Tom Emanski Defensive Drill All-Stars) when they are clearly not worthy of it. The third baseman on his team wore not one, but two of those giant adjustable knee braces that you see NFL O-linemen wearing under their pants, and our right fielder showed up wearing golf spikes and cargo shorts.

The game itself was pretty uneventful except for a couple of blips:
- The umpire grievously missed like five calls, the last coming when a throw went over the first baseman's head and into the dugout and he steadfastly refused to award the runner an extra base, followed by my dad and I both shouting within eighteen inches of his face until he broke down. Never have I felt so close to my father.
- The other team's third baseman looked about a deuce and a half and had the range of a corpse. He literally could not bend over far enough to get his glove to the ground, but he still made like 15 assists, picking up ridiculous hops with his head pulled EVERY TIME. This pissed me off, because I really wanted to yell "Dorn, get in front of the damn ball! Don't give me this "ole" bullshit!" but he never made an error.

We ended up winning like 18-13. After the game we went to Mulleady's, which quickly turned into the Most Depressing Postgame Pizza Ever. Softball is like the one opportunity for these guys to re-create their lost college greatness, so they morph into the frattiest of fraternity brothers when they're all together. They all kick in for three pitchers of Coors Light and then go on about what a collective drag their wives are (with the exception of my dad, of course, who will never ever ever say anything bad about my mom in my presence). Wolfson is the worst, though. He's about 5'5" and built like a bowling pin. Every time I've played with him he asks me "how the Stanford pussy is" with the tone of a researcher planning a future field trip. He also chimes in with perverted sexual comments about the fortysomething drag-ass waitress, who has David Lee Roth's hairstyle and a set of fake boobs that have slid down her chest so that it looks like someone shoved two canteloupe halves under her skin.

I'm sure they do this after every game, but I get the feeling it's worse when I'm around. Since I'm the only person under 35 on the team I'm like a walking reminder of college, and each guy always seem to feel the need to impress me with his exploits to make himself feel younger.

"You know, I got drafted by the Twins in '77."

"That chick looks good, huh? Man, at your age I would have shown her a thing or two."

"Have another beer, you're still young."

All of them would trade every dollar they have to be 21 again. Mike attends fantasy football camps at USC. Larry wears his hat from college to the games. Inevitably, the conversation turns to the girls at college, and war stories about exaggerated parties and threesomes start coming out. Sometimes I really want to bust out a line like "Jesus, that's nothing. Last weekend I had sex with five sorority girls on top of a pile of cocaine the size of your car." I'm sure that would get a laugh. Except from my dad.

Also, Frank Robinson: giant douche.