Score: 40-20
Location: Lambert Original (Paradise Valley, AZ)
On a brisk winter morning in the desert valley, a silver van traversed the calderas under the first rays of sun, making its way through parched riverbeds and eventually arriving at Bar-Z Lane where it turned the corner and came careening round the driveway and onto the back dirt lot where it was put into park in the SW corner at a near 90-degree angle with the driver side windows down and the sunroof cracked. Preceding it in time but not location was a black coupe with glinting wheels; driver-side windows also down.
Then, all in a moment, the 2 passengers from the van emerged, flanked by the man in the coupe—a slick, mustached gentleman in a black and gray jumpsuit—while a 4th man with both his arms held high above his head as if to signal a victory stepped out from the garage as the articulated door curled up and settled into its musty confines. The 4 men all walked towards each other, converging at a point where dirt meets with concrete; a site which had an aura about it as if it were some primordial altar of sacrifice, where dreams are fulfilled or crushed, labors are rewarded or rejected, and sweat and blood are shed equally.
The men began conversing in pleasant tones, and exchanging handshakes and other forms of greeting. A fifth, younger man with ruddy cheeks soon emerged from inside the Spanish-style home with its sun-bleached orange brick, and joined their assemblage. A ritual then transpired in which the men, in turn, softly tossed a white plastic ball into the air with one hand while the other held a black plastic bat; the two hands then joining on the handle of the bat in an effort to make contact with the ball and hit it as far as they could. As the ritual concluded, the men split into 2 sides and it became apparent that they were about to engage in a great battle -- a wiffle battle.
With the rare occurrence of somewhere between 4 and 8 Gil Tyrees being in Phoenix roughly around the same time, the email and SMS channels were fluttering with coordination efforts to see if a game (or two) at Lambert Original might be possible. We settled on the morning of Dec. 29th and were fortunate to get 4 of the greats there in attendance. (We tried to do some last-minute rearranging to see if we could get Mark there but, when asked about his projected whereabouts on Jan 1, he could only sagely respond with a metaphor about predicting where farts travel after they're laid. So I took that as a cue to not reschedule the game.)
We were almost joined by a non Gil Tyree, Scott Briggs, who was so desperate to join the elite club that when he was told he couldn't bring his 12-year-old and therefore needed to make new car arrangements, was about to take an Uber from Gilbert, but eventually thought better of it.
The matchup saw me on the mound for my side vs. Crato for his.
In the early going, I managed to keep the ball somewhat in check, getting out of a bases-loaded jam to give up only 2 runs in the first half of the inning. After that, the Des-Pace-Michael team got 2 early outs but then employed some serious Moneyball strategy to work the pitchcount, foul off a bunch of 2-strike pitches, and hit line-drive singles in all directions to get a lot of runs on the board. We were up 8-2 when I cleared the bases with a grand salami to go up 12-2. Crato claimed he was relieved to have a clean slate, and then soon got the 3rd out.
In the 2nd inning their bats started to heat up and they notched it up 12-12 in the top half. We put up 2 runs in our half of the inning, and as I took the mound I tried to tell myself that if I could stay focused we could maintain the small lead and end up on top. It was at that point that things started to really unravel.
I gave up homer after homer after homer for the next 3 innings. They would go on to get to 40 runs, almost all of them via the long ball. We chipped a bit here and there, but were no match for their hitting prowess.
Crato had just a few dry spells at the plate, but for a long stretch there he was walking up to the plate and coming out swinging for the fences on the first pitch, and he did so successfully 4 or 5 times in a row.
And when Paul was at the plate he would either crank it into or over the oleander bushes, or in the cases where I got to a 2-strike count on him, he would usually reach out to get the bat on the ball and it would infuriatingly float towards one of the cars and dink it somewhere for an automatic homer. To throw some salt in the wound, his youngster, Wally, watched most of the game leaning up against the triple wall in left-field foul territory where he would yell out, "Go Dad! Go Dad!" and repeatedly ask who was winning. To get some outs I ended up having to throw my absolute hardest (which caused some real soreness for a few days), and when I ended the 5th with a strikeout on Paul I gave Wally a prolonged staredown. But Oleander Lambert and his boy got the better of me that day.
One minor consolation was found in the new Jane Lambert Tree, whose namesake had had it installed without consulting anyone from any of the various wiffle chapters. The tree sits right by the triple wall just beyond the concrete, in fair territory. It was ruled that any ball hitting the tree would be an automatic single. It was further proposed and ratified (3-1) that a ball that hits a leaf of the tree would not be playable for an out on the fall, but would be an automatic single. This ruling (though I was the lone dissenter) turned out to help me when Paul twice cranked a ball to left field over the fence that would have clearly been a homer but was ruled a single when it grazed a leaf on the tree. Des and I giggled at our luck both times, but both times Crato immediately followed the single with a homer, rendering our luck hollow.
Game Highlights
- The Lambert gardner, Gaylen, showed up in about the 3rd inning and caught up with Paul while he was on deck.
- In the wiffle waffle battle Patty went toe to toe with Jane and came out on top. Jane had planned on Belgian waffles for the boys following the game, but due to some earlier waffling, Patty pounced and ended up hosting a breakfast of her own, which the Barker boys were obliged to attend.
- Michael got a bloody finger from a Crato pitch but downplayed it as just dryness, and then called time to put a band-aid on it.
- During the band-aid timeout, while Paul scaled the house to fetch a ball from the roof, Crato pitched a ball to Des and declared that the pitch was "all or nothing". Des then cranked the pitch for a homer, giving his team the technical victory on the day.
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| Left: "Pitch it inside on his dry fingers." | Right: Des cranking an all-or-nothing homer (note Paul on the roof) |
Game report by Pace Barker
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