We had a softball game today, and I was elected coach by virtue of the fact that I happened to be bringing the clipboard to the game and our real coach was called away to pick up his kids at the last minute.

Most of our team showed up about 15-20 minutes late. For the first inning the other team had to lend us a bunch of players. We were a bit nervous because they are one of the better teams in the league. At last a gaggle of interns and foreigners showed up, and the game began in earnest. In a great turn of fortune, a random guy named Drew happened to be walking by, looking for a soccer game, just as we were desperate for more players.

Me: "Is that guy ours?"
Josh: "Uh... he doesn't look familiar..."
Intern: "Oh, he works in my office!"
Us: "CONVINCE HIM TO JOIN THE TEAM!"

His name was Drew. Turns out he couldn't find the soccer game, and he just happened to have his baseball glove in his trunk, so he was drafted on the spot and instantly became one of our best players. I put him at shortstop, third base, first base, and outfield, and I was convinced that he could have played literally any other position if the game had gone on for more innings.

Thrust, as I was, into the role of team captain without any warning, I had to come up with the roster, announce the batters, and coach the team. 90% of the people on the team were total newbies, to the point that we only had a very few people who knew the rules well enough to coach first and third base. Most of the others were foreigners-- Israeli, French, Italian, Indian, etc. We had to say, "Run to second! Now STOP! STOP ON SECOND! GET BACK ON THE BASE! AHHHH! STAND ON THE BASE!!!!!!"

There was a lot of coaching. We ended up with tons of players, which is great, but which also makes coming up with the roster for each and every new inning a shell game of epic proportions. I started out doing pretty poorly (more than once ending up somehow with five outfielders, none of whom was aware that there was a problem), but as time went on things improved.

Raju, our Indian player, has graduated from being a total newbie who runs with the bat all the way to first base, to being a reliable fielder, thrower, and hitter. When he came up to bat everyone saw the awkward way he held the bat and brought the outfield in, and then someone said, "UH-OH, WHAT IF HE'S A CRICKET PLAYER?" and everyone scrambled to move back out again. For the record, he is a cricket player.

Despite all of these challenges, we found ourselves up 15 to 14 in the top of the last inning, with the other team up to bat. They got some runners going, and hit one to deep center where Josh's intern was playing for the first time in his life. I'd taken Josh out of the game (despite the fact that he was our star outfielder) because I was trying to give everyone an equal amount of playing time. Amazingly the intern ran after the ball and hurled it back to our good luck charm, Drew, who likewise lasered it to home, where we tagged out a runner before she could score. The subsequent outs were at least as amazing. Carla was playing right field, as she was recovering from surgery and forbidden from playing contact sports. They hit one out to her, and she got it after a few hops and fired it to second base, where the too-cocky batter was TAGGED OUT COLD by ubiquitous shortstop Drew.
Not to be dissuaded, they hit it out to Carla again, who got under it for an amazing catch. ESPECIALLY since we had run out of baseball gloves and Carla was fielding the whole inning with a tiny child's glove that didn't even completely fit on her hand!

The score was 15 to 15. Bottom of the last inning. Our team gets up to bat. Old fan favorite Steve leads off by hitting it hard to right but the first baseman snags it with an incredible catch. Dream outfielder and slugger Josh knocks it deep into right for a double. THEN, Marco, Italian, intern, person-who-knows-literally-nothing-about-baseball, pokes one into the outfield just far enough so that speedy Josh can score the winning run.

THE CROWD GOES WILD.

A bunch of other stuff obviously happened today but clearly this was the most important.

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