Once again, I was pitcher for our PNNL league team the Plutonium Pirates (arrrrr). This is the third year of the team, and this year we were really good. I had to miss a few games, but the team did great and we had a lot more fun than we had in years past. The softball tournament was probably the least fun part of the whole season, though, partly because I was so busy with work, and partly because it was cutting into other extracurricular activities, and partly because I was just tired of it.
It should come as no surprise, then, that we made it all the way to the final game. It was double elimination, and we were in the losing bracket all the way through to the end. There were some rough spots, and a very confusing game where I was absolutely convinced we had lost until the other team had accounting problems and despite our own accounting to the contrary, they said they had lost and we were not about to argue. Another team was ridiculously unsportsmanlike with a team of ringers that ended up all muscle and no strategy. We managed to finesse a win out of them, but they did their best to hit as hard as they could as straight as they could, and I was victim to more than one direct shot.
We ended up squared against what was clearly the better team. They were the best team for years, they had always managed to kick our butts, and though we put up a fight, they pulled out the win and deserved it. Still, that we’ve come from a brand new team to taking second out of fourteen teams shows that we’ve made a lot of improvements. Plus, this year we had cool shirts.