Chemists and Softball
So in last night's softball game the Beer Barron Brigade played the who cares what their name is team and lost. The fact that we lost both games was not surprising. At this point the season we have a perfect record. We are 0-8 or something like that. Basically, we have never won a game. On the upside, the guys came really, really close last night. The score was tied at 10-10 at the end of regulation, and it took another two innings to determine who the winner would be.
I have already given it away by mentioning the fact that we lost, but it doesn't matter. Everyone played a great game, and it was much more enjoyable to watch than the previous week's crushing by the Run Rule Recipients when we were beaten 40 something to 8 and then high 20 something to not very many. Made for some very short and dare I say embarassing games?
Before the nubulation I used to play right field for the team. I enjoyed the games that I did get to play in, and sitting in the stands last night I was really wishing that I could be out there playing with them, but alas... my wounds are still too fresh. I am looking forward to next season though. We are going to knock them all out and show them how a team that should be playing in say H or I league ball plays C leagues ball, and I can tell you right now, it is not going to be pretty. Look out, we are going to be crushed by you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Insert war cry here)
So I took some pictures last night while I was sitting in the stands so I think I will try to post them in the this blog as that is what I have seen a lot of people do. The question is how do you do it?Let's see...
Ok, so I think I have a picture of Jimmie at Bat posted in this entry. It it showing up as a dead link, so I am not sure if it will work or not. I will have to wait until I get this entry published to see if it works. If it does, then I have some other things I can slap in here as well.
So from watching the team and playing with them for a couple of games, it would seem that we as chemists are not very well suited to play softball. There are things that we do well. Synthesizing various molecules, both organic and inorganic depending on your tastes, analyzing said molecules, and then tellling world why we think that they way we made the molecule is better than anyone else's method of making the same thing. And... consuming a large amount of a golden EtOH enriched liquid at deparmental functions. Those are things that we are good at. Softball really isn't our forte. Good thing it is all for fun. It is not entirely clear how much fun the players have during games when we are getting crushed, but our loyal band of trveling hecklers gets a huge kick out of seeing us get dominated every week.
So allow me to leave you with a random really bad chemistry analogy. Chemists and softabll appear to be a heterogenous mixture. They sort of mix fi you really stir them up well, and reactions do occur, but seemingly more slowly then under optimum conditions. Chemists and beer are a homogenous mixture. Everything mixes together well, and reactions happen so fast they sometimes exotherm on you and there is absolutely no way to control them. So maybe we can use the beer as a phase transfer catalyst to help boost the softball playing performance reaction. Would that be like using a performance enhancing drug? Someone should try it next week. See if playing drunk increases a chemist's ability to play softball.