In the dawn of the morning, just hours after the Cougars left the diamond, there was a certain buzzing in my head jarring me from my sleep. Shaky, smelly and snoozy, this was certainly not the way to rise. Was it an alarm? Was it the remnants of last night's excess? Nope, neither.
The wake-up cry was simply informing me that it was my move in the addictive app, Words With Friends. An apt metaphor as Cougar words needed to be shared with Cougar friends.
Like softball, Words With Friends offers a competitive connectedness with comrades.
In the season opener, the Cougars were matched up against the rival Brown Stars. Our goal was to play like Merriam-Webster and drop many seven letter words on them such as inspire, intense and impress. Instead, we dropped the ball numerous times as well as a handful of four letter words that are only found in the Urban Dictionary.
Our first inning was quite scrabbled.
The Brown Stars had the first move and placed their letters on the board's pink star and racked up a 4 point lead. The Cougars mistakenly thought we were playing Numbers With Friends and quickly went down 1-2-3.
In subsequent moves on the surface, the Cougars hit the ball with as much glee as a 50 point tiledrop. Unfortunately, we gave our opponent an opening by making our ERROR into ERRORS.
Heck, we would find it easier to play a Q word without a U than it was to put our hands firmly on the ball.
Although a tough night, there were a few highlights from the contest.
- The Joke Writer, who is approaching the half-century mark, had two triple word scores on the bases and showed that even an old man can still get to third base twice in a night.
- Flandog made a couple of impressive catches in the field. In past blogs I may have referred to such outstanding fielding as "Pulling a Fortier;" however, this term will now be reserved only to reference hamstrings.
- Our new Cougar cub, Boom, came out in his inaugural game and promptly went 4 for 4 while leaving a trail of smoke on the basepaths. He was voted Newbie of the Year for the McKenzie Variety Show and he is the front runner for the Cougar Rookie of the Year (well, he is the only rookie).
When our racks were cleared, the Brown were the stars, outscoring the Green 15-9. Given last season's results, this was not unexpected.
Before the season, the park district got in the alphabet game and decided to play A and B. Our commissioner gave teams the option of a competitively competitive division or a recreationally competitive division.
The B division is comprised of six returning teams and one newcomer. Based on last year's results, the B division final standings would have stacked up like this:
- Chicken Shack (fka Hitmen) 5-0
- Gullivers 4-1
- Brown Stars 3-2
- Ethervision 2-3
- Cougars 1-4
- Tappers 0-5
- Geriatric Springers NA
Shack is clearly the favorite in this new campaign and the Cougars are anxious to continue the rivalry this coming Tuesday night. The Cougars are aiming to make our ballplay as good as our wordplay.
The Chickens are the best but the Cougars are going to try and kick their app. You see, we spent the entire offseason mastering Angry Birds.
No comments:
Post a Comment