Career Choices

Given the outcome of last night’s game, I again turned to my lovely daughter this morning and asked her to write the blog. She said, “No way Daddy. You need to take personal responsibility and be accountable for your poor actions and you cannot run from your problems.”

I am glad I wrote her words down so I can use them on her and Charley during their teenage years.

The Cougars have all made smart career path decisions by not choosing to be professional 16-inch softball players. We would all be incredibly poor or extremely unemployed.

I always tell my kids the same thing that we have all heard in the past, “You can be anything you want to be and work in any job you want.” One day, a few years ago, while watching baseball with Miranda, she inquired “Daddy, do these men get paid to do this or is it just for fun?” I said, “They get paid sweetheart.” She pressed on, “Daddy, why didn’t you choose that for a job?” If she was at the game last night she would be very happy with my career choice.

Even in a loss, we always look for nuggets of improvement.

We opened the season last year against Keefe, the defending league champs, and they dropped 17 runs on us before we got the first three outs. This year, we only let up 7 runs in that initial frame.

They beat us up pretty good last night, 18-0, but we demonstrated a bit of progress over the 35 runs they hung on us last year.

Our offense was anemic and our defense was lackluster and we were generally broken-down. If anyone from the DMV happened to be watching the game, we may have been granted placards for premium parking spaces.

We just did not make good decisions in the field or at the plate. It reminds me of the time the Otsuka family went to a celebratory meal at a Mr. Benny’s Steak and Lobster on the south side. Everyone at the table ordered steak or lobster, except Julie, who ordered halibut and was not pleased with her meal at all. I told her there was probably a reason the owners did not call the restaurant Mr. Benny’s Steak and Halibut.

Speaking of food, let’s get to the postgame. The postgame seems to be the highlight every week and last night’s party was definitely not called by the mercy rule.

We headed to my backyard where Otsuka was in charge of drinks and snacks. He went with the team color and we drank green bottles of beer.

As a side note, here is a picture of the ice that was dumped out of the cooler after midnight. The picture was taken at about 8:00 this morning. It is just crazy that in July it is so cold outside that in eight hours ice can’t melt. I am having second thoughts on my hometown.

We have had artichoke dips, sausages, potstickers, pizzas and many other tasty treats at the Cougar postgames.

Last night, Diddy, to go along with the cocktails, brought us bagel wieners and mustard.

These delectable dogs were dipped and consumed quickly.

It’s too bad Charley wasn’t awake for this delicacy. My guess is that the sight of a wiener with a protective covering would have reminded him of the athletic supporter and cup I recently bought him to wear during his sports activities. We ended up having to take it away because he was out in the field constantly thumping his lower midsection yelling out, “Knock knock. Who’s there? Wienie. Wienie who?”

(Tip to aspiring softball bloggers: When you and your team play terribly, make sure you have some somewhat funny or cute stories to divert the reader’s attention from the actual facts of the game.)

The postgame lasted until 12:30am and we proudly finished all the beer.

The Cougars have four regular season games left and, thankfully, no more 9:00pm game times. Now that we have a few earlier games it will be good to get the families out to the field as well as for some postgame action.

Next week is the long awaited matchup against the real softball heroes of Wilmette, the Hitmen. It is a tough matchup for the Cougars because the Hitmen are a good team and close to the top of the leaderboard in our league.

For those in Hitmen Country that are lurking out there, here is my scouting report on your team: oops, wait, my battery is running low, no trash talk or bulletin board material that will turn game week comments into game day heroics.

See you out there!