Greening the Earth

This is the season when everything starts turning green and Cougar Green just enhances the magnificent landscape. Last night, the masses that were assembled at Howard Park were immersed in Mother Earth's springtime gift. This is what we Chicagoans live for after a hard brutal winter. Our senses were treated like royalty. We had sun on our skin, cheers in our ears, and tint in our squint.

Howard Park's lilac bushes were in full bloom. The purifying scent coupled with the soft breeze made me feel like a fabric softener sheet was stuck up my nose.

The Cougars played Timeless last night and lost in 7 innings. Yes, Timeless is a new team, however, their name is a bit of a misnomer. You see, Timeless is made up of every player from Miller Time, except one - Johnny Miller. The team should be named Millerless. This team is still one of the best in the league and is always a contender for the title.

After the first two innings, we were down 10-1 and it was not looking sunny. I should not have had such a poor outlook for our team, you know, maybe things would not be as bad I as I thought.

It was like the time I was drinking a LaCroix and and left it sitting on the counter for a while. At first, I was disappointed that my drink lost all its carbonation and I was about to give up on it. But then I remembered, my effervescent drink without the fizz is simply water. Invigorating, energizing, revitalizing, life-giving water. There was hope after all!

The Cougars were left for dead in the 5th inning, just before the slaughter rule was in effect. Some Cougars must have had a water baptism in the dugout and were granted a different type of mercy because we were resurrected through line shots and hard grounders. Our bats had risen. Risen indeed.

Here are some of the highlights.

• Melchiorre pitched a walk-free game. Even more impressive because he had to fend off the strong wind and rockets hit to his knees.
• Fortier once again made a great play with an over the shoulder catch that he turned into a double play. I think only Fortier can "pull a Fortier."
• There was a ball hit far over my head in center. It was hit so far that we needed two cutoff men just to get it to home plate to nail the runner trying for a homer. Tinkers to Evers to Chance has nothing on Radtke to Fortier to Martin to Flannery.

We did have high hopes for last night's game given our near victory last week. In the end, we did lose but put up a valiant effort.

I think I know why we lost and are now 0-2. We have only practiced twice this season and unless you count hot yoga or cold shoveling, our workouts have not been demanding. In some cases, exercise did not exist. Case in point: Diddy's treadmill.

I guess what I am saying is that the Cougars spent the offseason finding new storage areas for toys in our houses and for fat on our bodies.

Trouter turned into a pig in the winter months.




Oxer demonstrates here that you are what you eat.

The economy has hit everybody hard, especially the Cougars. We already knew Melchiorre was a great pitcher but here we see him pitching for the cleanup spot.

Here is Lipinski trying to earn a few bucks by lobbying for the high fructose corn syrup business and trying to fatten the rest of the population.

And lastly, here is Diddy as Charlie Brown. A true Cougar parallel given that we also are lovable losers. Like Charlie, we also head out to the park time after time, filled with determination and hope and resolving to kick that football, or hit that home run, as the case may be.

In the end, our weekly Lucy always pulls the football away and we head to the postgame. Like ol' Chuck, we sit around and make sarcastic jibes to lament our ridiculous actions and bad luck.

There is an upside to our weekly Tuesday gatherings. We learn such gripping answers such as, "does Dave drink from a bottle or a cup?"

Following up on last week's ridiculous bionic woman discussion, we learned last night that when one checks into a hotel room, especially the seedy ones, always look under the bed for a bag of porn and in the Bible for a wad of cash (contributor will remain nameless). Finally, it was decided that the Financial Times is downright the best damn newspaper on Earth.

So another great night ends just before Wednesday morning strikes and now we have only seven days until Cougar Green meets Keefe Orange.