how do you spell underachiever?

(part two)

((H-U-M-C S-O-F-T-B-A-L-L))

what does this picture represent? i could wax philosophical on your ass if you wanted me too, because, to me, this pictures represents a lot of different things on a lot of different levels, but i won't do that today. i'll answer the opening question with a direct quote from one of my teammates. "I believe the team out there last night is the strongest and the most talented team i’ve seen you have." and he's right. i've been organizing humc softball for seven years now, and the team you see above (not pictured: mark mccollister, brian gulock and a man named cody) is, by far, the strongest we've ever assembled (and there is something great to how we've done it. i don't know if there is a "right way" to build a team, but we don't go out searching for ringers. we have just added friends and guys that we like to be around and we play together. it's that simple. we just happen to be pretty good too.). that taken into consideration, though, tuesday night we fell victim to the same thing that humc teams of yore have fallen to with a scary (and shitty) amount of consistency. a first-round flame-out. and i don't know why. i don't know if it's because we know how good we should be and we let those expectations get to us. i don't know if we just happen to have "one of those nights" every night we open up a tournament. i don't know if it something deeper or darker. maybe some cruel force has something against us and it leads to the only night of our season that sees three of our strongest bats go 1-9, all the while leaving runners on base like that is the point of the game instead of actually scoring those runs. whatever it is, it is completely (shitty) frustrating. in past seasons, we have won the regular season only to be unceremoniously dumped in the first round. in past seasons, we have lost but one game only to match that season long total in the only game we allow ourselves in the postseason. this season, we won seven out of our last nine regular season games and entered the playoffs with, what seemed like, a great deal of momentum, momentum that we lost somewhere between the parking lot and field three. i gauge the power of our team versus others in the same manner i make my picks for my ncaa bracket every march. i look at our match-up and ask myself if i think we would win a seven game series. this season, i only answered "no." to that question with one team (you can guess it wasn't the team that beat us tuesday.). the same goes for march madness, which is why i was not at all surprised that florida won the championship game. there was not one other team in the field of 65 that i thought had a legitimate chance of taking florida in a seven game series. so, i (and many, many others) were not dumbfounded at how the bracket shook itself out. but the reason that there are upsets that have people all over the nation cursing and ripping their brackets up every march is the same reason our softball team seems to wallow in misery more often than not when it comes to our own tournament. it's one and out. upsets are bound to happen. and they do. and george mason becomes a household name. and some crappy church team that we mercied eight weeks back ends up making us carry heavy chins and hearts to our homes prematurely. but we move on. and we play another season. we only have to wait a couple weeks to begin exacting revenge and then in another couple months, we'll have another shot at a tourney. another shot at defeating the failures of our past. another shot to live up to expectations we make for ourselves during the regular season. we'll see what happens.

on a positive note, jesus was in the building last night in atlanta. a three run home run is how mark teixeira introduced himself to his new fans. and mahay and dotel closed out the already defeated astros like they should have. by forcing the knife in just a little farther and then twisting. you never get a second chance to make a first impression? well, consider me impressed then.