Freedom Ain't Free

Graduate school is hard. Around early April of every year it becomes downright torturous, both physically and mentally. So, in order to let off some steam and get our bodies into fine form, we and our group of friends joined the co-ed intramural softball league, with games throughout March. Evan and I have been bringing the History and Politics departments together in new and fantastic ways, including with this team, called--quite appropriately to both disciplines--Freedom Ain't Free.

Our first practice was our first game. A bunch of flabby 25 year olds against 18 year old freshmen who just a year ago were playing high school baseball. We gave it our all and walked away 5 to 16--safely escaping the "slaughter rule" after they let up on us in the 4th inning. Losing's not so bad. We went home and drank beers, while our opponents had sody-pops.

Our next game was much worse. We were playing the Medical School team. They were intensely serious about the game and all-in-all quite rude. 22-1--Slaughtered, technically and officially. While our previous opponents had recently been playing high school basebal, two members of this team were previous NCAA college baseball players.

Our final game went quite well for a while, when many of our opponents still hadn't shown up, so they had no shortstop and only one outfielder. We pulled off an outstanding 17 to 6, though nearly all of those 6 were in the first inning.

We were very good sports, despite our dismal record. Molly taught everyone a series of fantastic softball chants, and we would sing songs from each player's homeland when they went up to bat. Things like, "Texas, Our Texas, All Hail the Mighty State! Texas, our Texas, so wonderful, so great!," God Save the Queen, O Canada, etc.

Evan, a good slugger and one of our more athletic players, played a number of different bases. Though he was nervous about it, he also played catcher for a while and did QUITE WELL!

I, myself, had a perfect on-base percentage, despite NEVER swinging the bat during the entire season. My strategy was to have the smallest strike zone possible, which I achieved with this iron stance. I guess I also had an efficient substrategy of making funny faces at the pitchers.