Score: 10-5 (through 2-1/3 innings)
Location: Butler Holmes Park - Field 2 (Arlington, VA)
The stars aligned to bring 'Kuwaiti James' into D.C. for a few days while I am currently home alone as the rest of my family is out of the country for a month. So James and Paul had the brilliant idea to do a Friday-night Gil Tyree slumber party at my house. It's amazing how easily you can ease right back into your old high school/college conversations and behavior when the setting is right like that.
We talked about old flames and funny Crato stories and stuff like that till about 2 in the morning, and then we all got in our jammies and bunked up together to watch 'Furious 5', committed to trying to watch the whole thing. I made a comment at about the 10-minute mark and when James didn't respond we realized that he was a goner. About 5 minutes after that Bluth told us to wake him up when it got to the "Brazhio" part, which neither Paul or I had any idea what that meant.
About 40 minutes later, after Mia tells Brian that she's pregnant, and Dom brings them in for a group hug and sagely proclaims, "the family just got bigger," Paul and I decided to hit the sack so we could be ready for our 7:16am sunrise game.
The room we were sleeping in doesn't have a clock so when James's phone was buzzing and I saw him moving around I figured it was just about time to get up. And then Bluth's alarm sounded, and he and James were wide awake (and cheerful) while Paul and I were still half asleep and Paul started lodging complaints at them for snoring so loud all night and keeping him awake. Then, in anticipation of my phone alarm going off, but it never sounding, I decided to ask what time it was only to learn that it was only 6:00am. With Paul and I confused and irritated as to why we were being awoken so early, Bluth cheerfully explained that he didn't actually set his alarm for that time, he just didn't "unset" it, which was only slightly satisfying. He further clarified that he and James often have to wake up early so they can worry about "old-guy" things like seeding their lawn, and keeping kids off their lawn, and making sure the paper doesn't get wet from the sprinklers, and other such concerns. The only solace in all of this tomfoolery was that we might still manage to catch some zzz's until the real alarm went off at about 6:50am. So Paul and I tried to ignore the old guys and bury our heads in our pillows. We successfully dozed off only to have James blurt out about 5 minutes later, "Whoa! Serena lost!" which didn't really seem like wake-up-worthy news to us, so we tried to snooze one more time but had little success since Bluth was the first to fall asleep and was now snoring very loudly.
When we all woke up for real we got decked out in our many layers for the tundra conditions we would soon face on the playing field. James was the most ill-prepared for this, having been acclimatized to the Kuwaiti desert, and having just had to shave his beard for his LDS-safezone school interview at SVU.
After hitting for teams we got underway with Bluth on the mound for his side. His tantalizers induced some ugly swings and he quickly had 2 outs with no runners on base. He got excited and told James he would treat him to Sizzler later that night if he got a 1-2-3 inning. Then we quickly got a bunch of hits and put up 6 runs. One of those hits was a fast grounder that zigzagged on the uneven snow and sent James running in one direction only to double back and do a banana-peel slip and fall.
Their team then fired back with a 4-run inning thanks to a double homer off of Paul's bat.
The defense on the hard-snow field had some pros and cons. The cons were that mobility was very limited so it was tiring and difficult to chase down flyballs. Also locating the white balls in the white snow to throw them back to the pitcher was no easy task. The pro, however, was that the grounders would invariably skid across the crusty snow until they sank into a footprint divot where they would wildly spin in place for 10 seconds or so. James quickly (and annoyingly) got wise to this and became an expert in playing deep and then very slowly fielding grounders for outs since the ball was still technically rolling.
Another condition that needs to be mentioned is that the extreme cold meant that the balls cracked under too much pressure, which meant we had to be careful with our meager 3 balls in inventory. James took this precaution a little too seriously and tried to do some sort of delicate swinging bunt thing only to foul twice and then make an ill-advised hack at a 3rd pitch in the dirt for a strikeout.
In the 2nd inning, down to only one ball remaining, and with their team figuring out some crafty defensive maneuvers, we got blanked during our turn to bat. Their team then countered with a run in their half of the frame, bringing it to a tight 6-5 ballgame headed into the 3rd.
In the 3rd Paul came on in relief, which put Bluth behind the plate, which, according to him, was bad news for us since he used to be a catcher. James's new strategy from the outfield appeared to be to ask lots of questions to A-Man while he was at the plate. I was able to identify this quickly from the dugout, and helped A-Man to make sure his mental plate preparation wasn't overly compromised. Thankfully, he was able to stay laser-focused and pound some doubles mid-sentence. We had a good streak going and had put up 3 runs when A-Man came to the plate and got another 2-out hit, driving in another run, but also cracking our last wiffleball. We all conferred at home plate and James proposed that since we were short on time instead of trying to leave the field and find some new wiffleballs we call the game (with their team declared as the victors; and the score doesn't matter -- whatever), and head over to District Taco for some breakfast. I was worried about what the other Gil Tyrees would think, but James told some profound story (which I've now forgotten) which convinced us all that it was the right decision. Bluth taught us that by being decisive like this we were able to avoid "going on the road to Abilene" -- a fitting analogy he had learned from his business management ("BusM") days at BYU. I think it all played out the way R.C. Willey would have wanted.
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| James explaining the virtues of District Taco's breakfast |
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| One of several moments when Bluth would proclaim, "I really like D.C." |
- The series of questions James posed to A-Man had the residual benefit of waking up Bluth's 'Inquisitive Adam' side
- The slumber party & wiffle & District Taco good vibes were so strong that James was overcome and responded by giving me an awkward back massage while we were waiting for our food
- James and Adam didn't say their prayers before going to bed
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| Paul doing his best impersonation of Joe Friend impersonating a Russian. Bluth relying on artificial energy drinks to enhance his performance. |
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