Score: 25-14
Location: Butler Holmes Park (Arlington, VA)
With a rare U.S. appearance by Saudi Arabian legend, James Lambert, we figured it was a great time to squeeze in some Saturday wiffle action.
Since it just felt right to have it be older brother generation vs. younger brother generation we dispensed with the custom of hitting for teams, and instead hit for longest ball to see who would bat first. Paul and I outclobbered Bluth and James by a longshot which kind of set the tone for the James and Adam mantra of them doing the little things to win ballgames. "Don't you guys wish you were as good at doing the little things." "Maybe when you guys are older you'll know it's all about the little things." And so on and so forth.
Bluth took the mound in the first (but only for part of it -- James took the mound for about 2 pitches somewhere in there; gave up a long single, and ceded the mound back to Bluth), making the arrogant pronouncement early on that he was the only one in the league that ever played high school baseball. We (Paul mostly) managed to knock them around a bit for 5 runs, and in the process breaking in the field with its first extra-base hits, including a homerun in the nature reserve.
But to their credit they roared right back with a 9-run inning in the bottom half of the frame. In the first pitch James faced he saw one come in a little high and outside and pelted it straight back to centerfield. James, Paul had just warned me, was having a post-career resurgence, as all the Lambert brothers could attest from their recent family reunion in Idaho. As they batted around they bantered about high school friends, 90's music, "little things", various vulgarities, and some other inane James commentary involving references to things like Seal and Giselle in the same sentence. But to his credit he also compared Rae (my 4-yr-old daughter who was standing like a statue near the home-run line wearing a bright pink hat) to Glenn Close in The Natural, and then proceeded to hit a grandslam right in her direction.
But the challenge for their team on this steamy August afternoon would be endurance. I guess lack of focus would be another challenge for them. And for that matter you could add despondence to the list. As Paul's and my bats continued to heat up, with such feats as answering Bluth's taunts of, "I dare you to hit it in my direction" with a next-pitch 3-run jack right over his head, and wailing one over the yellow fence into the basketball court (a Butler Holmes Park first), their bats only seemed to cool down. While Paul and I added 20 runs to our total over the next few innings they would put up only 5 more runs over the course of the game, but a few of those had asterisks with things like grounding out to the pitcher but claiming that it was a foul ball, batting out of order but accusing us of being weenies, etc. Maybe this was what they meant by the little things.
And I assume that the little things philosophy only applied on offense, since they had a rough spell of dropping several easy popups, including one where James, as he chased back from the mound while Bluth charged in, hurriedly hollered out at the last second "You got it!", which Bluth interpreted as "Got it!". Bluth requested that going forward James not use the words "got it!" in a case where he was not going to make a play on the ball, and James suggested that he just say, "Got it!" for plays where he wanted Bluth to get the ball, and "I got it!" for plays where he would try to catch the ball. A couple more possibilities were tossed out by James but they never seemed to reach a consensus. All that being said, however, James did surprise us all when there was a deep fly to the outfield that we were all certain was going to drop for a hit once he started having to maneuver around the outfield bench and awkwardly negotiate his way up the hill, but he made a diving grab to snatch it for an out.
By the end of the 3rd we were running a bit short on time and we proposed making it a 4-inning game only (to which Bluth too-hastily agreed). In that final 4th inning they had all the right phrases (e.g. "x number of runs is like a freethrow in basketball.") but the body language just wasn't there. When we ran out of balls to pitch with since they had all piled up either in homerun or foul territory, but no one on their side was bothering to throw them back into play, that told you everything you needed to know.
- Paul dubbed the homerun nature reserve spot (or rather he allowed me to dub it for him), "The Sierra Club Nature Reserve"
- 3 motions were made with the following outcomes
- Motion to name the triple bench in centerfield, 'Bartman Bench' for always getting in the way when you need to catch a pop-up
- Motion upheld 3-1
- Motion to make the yellow border of the homerun fence be a 2x homer (with the add-on that it be applied retroactively for the benefit of the James and Bluth team)
- Motion struck down 2-2
- Motion to make the tree in centerfield a triple-tree (with the add-on that the James and Bluth team receive some random bonus that I can no longer recall)
- Motion struck down 2-2
- James and Adam accused me of having an ESPN 'Body Mag' poster of Bryce Harper in my bedroom. This joke morphed into us making plans for a 'Skin Edition' 2016 calendar of all the wiffle greats.
- James and Bluth successfully used sabermetrics as well as old-school scouting reports to shift around the field on defense depending on the situation. (For example, you can see below that in the early innings they played shallow outfield, and later on they played deep outfield, particularly with the James "highball" in play.)
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| The Bluth slider |
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| The James "highball" |
Game report by Pace Barker
