Our team won last night's dodgeball match. I say "our team" rather than the Loan Wolves, as the dodgeball team has a new name. For a change, and as we have three non-Wolves in our ranks, we have a new identity. Kevin and Garry finally unveiled the team name and colours last night. For dodgeball purposes, we are now...

Crouch End Tigers, Hendon Dragons!

Everyone got a film title shirt name, punning on their real names - Magnificent Kevin, The Kate Escape, etc. I got "Ghandy", though I think they missed the opportunity to go for something like "Freebie Andy Bean". The shirts, designed by Garry, are pretty cool.

The Four Dodgeballers of the Apocalypse (Or, Winning Hearts and Minds)

Went to a dodgeball tourney yesterday. Garry had found out about it at fairly short notice. We nominally had a team of seven or eight up to Friday, when it began to dwindle alarmingly. We picked up Julian as a replacement for some of the people who couldn't make it, but I arrived at the venue yesterday to find that Libs wasn't well and we were going to be down to four players for the day. Now a dodgeball team usually consists of six people, so we were going to be a bit short-handed. The surprised refrain: "are there really only four of you?" greeted us at the start of practically every match. Luckily, it isn't as much of a disadvantage as it would have been in most sports - fewer of you on the court means more dodging room for each of you.
It was a "fun" Christmas tournament, with fancy dress expected. Most teams had turned out in an impressive array of costumes. F*ckin Chuck Norris were in T shirts with Chuck on the front and a different CN fact on the back of each one. The Santa Claus-es-es-es were all in Santa suits, except for their Elf girl in pixie hat and curly-toed slippers. there was a big crowd for their festive match vs the Penguins, an almost all-girl side in matching black costumes with penguin-beak baseball hats and little gold bow-ties. One side were in dinner suits (I heard one of them ask his mate before their first game: "don't you think it might be a good idea to take the jackets off when we're actually playing?"). The best fancy dress prize deservedly went to the team who came as KISS, in full war paint and silver cloaks. Our team were meant to be 80s-themed, but Julian had had no time to get a costume together. He was wearing a Handel T shirt, though, so there was a 1680s, if not 1980s, connection. Kevin had a mullet wig and Frankie Says T shirt, and Garry was in full Hulk Hogan regalia - blond wig, padded muscle shirt and all. I went as John McClane from Die Hard. Was sad enough to draw Bruce Willis's tattoo on my arm in Sharpie, along with his tally of terrorists despatched. I had a cardboard cut-out gun taped to my back, and wrote "now I have a dodgeball - ho ho ho" on the front of my vest.
We set out our stall early, winning the first two group matches. Then we had a long gap between games, and came back to lose the next. The last match was against Team Oval Exiles, who'd won all their first three games. We rallied, kept our heads, and our tactical sense such as it was got us through.
I think it was just afetr the group stage that Matt came along - still not allowed to play till his injury heals, but a most welcome (and enthusiastic) supporter.
Our quarter-final drew us against a friendly bunch who'd come over to have their pictures taken with us earlier. We won the first set, lost the second, and had to play a decider. Garry chose this moment to Hulk up. The crowd went wild as he tore his T shirt off to reveal his fake muscles. We were inspired, and pulled out a victory to take us to the semis. Where F*ckin Chuck Norris put paid to our progress. We bowed out gracefully, watched the final and went to the pub with many of the other teams.
It was a good day. We'd more than punched above our weight, with Julian peforming brilliantly in his first outing, and could hold our heads up high. And we made some friends too. A lot of people from other teams congratulated us on our plucky outnumbered and outgunned performance. "You won our hearts!" one girl said,which was nice of her.

Christmas party

Friday was the Loan Wolves' Christmas party. We met up at the New Rose, and after a few drinks headed to a Brazilian restaurant. All-you-can-eat buffet, and waiters bringing joints of hjgh-quality meat products to serve at your plate. I fear the vegetarians among us didn't get to enjoy the experience to the full. We had the usual tongue-in-cheek end-of-year awards - mine was for the time I absent-mindedly went to the wrong park for the Tecumsehs match. As we left the restaurant, we discovered that Tzippy had somehow acquired a souvenir from the buffet cart...

Baseball movies

After a conversation with Blasey at rthe pub last night, I looked for a "definitive" list of baseball or softball movies.
This one's pretty good - how many have you seen?

Dodgeball update: "I'm gonna take that dodgeball and..."

After a shaky start last week, where despite winning three of the seven games we ended up 19 - 7 down in points to Who Let the Dodge Out at the end of the match, we picked ourselves up ready for the Dodgeball Furies.
Gabs was a welcome addition to the side, giving a much-needed option to rotate female players and also her lethal throwing arm. We had enough men to rotate complete half-teams of three, with Kevin and Gary as strikers in each. We managed to win most of the games, and even when we were on the losing end we held onto a couple of points thanks to a heroic display of dodging by Olivia and Tzippy.
Here is the last game, where we cemented our first dodgeball victory:

Dodge, duck, dip, dive - and DODGE!

Went along to the inaugural session for the Softballers' Dodgeball League last night. The Tecumsehs had decided to start an off-season event, and picked a game which could be played indoors and where everyone would be a novice. They picked dodgeball.
The venue was a church hall, so we had all been warned not to blaspheme or anything. I kept thinking of the phrase: "holy ground, highlander!".
There was a rules explanation, a couple of demonstration/test games, then we started playing to get the hang of it. It was interesting to see how quickly people picked it up. Dodging tends to come easier than throwing, especially as the balls are football-sized solid foam things quite unlike softballs. Which is as well if you get hit by them. Doesn't really hurt, and most hits tended to be scored on the legs or when someone failed a catch. Matches are made up of seven three-minute games, and you get a bit of a workout in that three minutes of running, throwing and dodging.
We had a mini-tournament, in which the Loan Wolves came fourth out of six. The game's fun to watch as well as play - lots of manic action, turnaround plays, close escapes and exciting finishes. Afterwards we went to the pub wher the draw for the tournament proper was held.
Oh, and of course, everyone there last night had seen the film...

Raiders Green v Loan Wolves - Highs and Lows

Inspired by Gabby's emails I am going to kick off the highs and lows of the last game of the season. Remember, finish on the high point!

Low Point - A classic ground ball fumble from me which, if taken well, could have been an easy out at first and prevented quite so many runs getting round on the next big hit. It also really hurt my thumb :(

High Point - Despite striking myself out it was my best batting performance ever with two sweet hits to right field, one of which certainly alarmed the Raider's first base. Onwards and upwards I hope.

Lesson Learnt - warm up with the heavy bat.

Raiders Green 12 - 11 Loan Wolves

Our last match of the 2009 season was the rescheduled game against Raiders Green. Sadly, we weren't able to maintain the initiative from that abandoned match, where we were seven up after our first inning. This was a close match, with neither side managing to dominate with their batting but errors in the field keeping the scores ticking round. Kate pitched well, and we had some great base hitting from Julian and Vic (hitting to right field to avoid the strong fielding at Third and Short Stop). We'd managed to post a three-run lead by the bottom of the seventh, but the Raiders had home team advantage and managed to get runners on bases without losing any outs then made the runs they needed to take the game.
This leaves us on the same points as the Tornadoes, but they played fourteen games and we played fifteen, and if I understand the cobbled-together league rules for this season properly we are going to have a 14/15ths multiplier imposed on our final points. This would leave us in the bottom three of eleven by .8 of a point, so if there's a Division Six next year we'd be relegated to it. Well, technically, it would be Division Three due to the planned splitting of the league into two.
It hasn't been as successful a season as we'd all have liked. There are areas where we have all improved, but game after game could have gone our way and didn't. Sometimes umpiring decisions went against us - this time, Matt ran into First, was called safe by the field umpire, who was then overruled by the plate umpire on their judgment call. Sometimes we had personal matters intrude into our softball - three of the Original Wolves, including one of our starting pitchers, going through redundancy through the season, for example (well, that's my excuse for turning up at the wrong park the other week). The heavens themselves intervened when we were on our best form all year in the match that was rained off. Still, though, we have to look at ourselves and how we could have done better. Batting overall is coming along well, but we need to make more of it and build the big innings that bring wins. We need to be able to have confidence in each other in our proper fielding positions, and to keep cool heads to make the right tactical choices quickly and decisively. As Michael says, when we play to our ability and work together as a team we can be a force to be reckoned with. We have the Winter ahead of us, with bi-weekly indoor training lined up. We are going to practice, to build up on what we've already achieved, and take it further. This was the toast at the pub after the game: "next year, whatever decision we end up in, they are not going to know what hit them - HERE'S TO NEXT SEASON!"

Loan Wolves 4 - 9 Meteors

Sociable softball
The Mets are a team we've known and liked since we started playing softball. Tonight's game was hard-fought, but entirely good-natured. Determined, effective fielding from both sides kept the score low, and for three innings it stood at three all. Then the Mets nosed ahead by one, and in their sixth at-bat they managed to increase the lead to five. We still didn't waver, though, and refused to let it turn into a rout. Sadly, we didn't manage to pull that lead back, and the match ended as it grew dark. Considering our relative places in the table, though, we can be proud of our performance.
The Mets had advised us beforehand to bring food, and as the match ended they fired up the barbecue. A picnic table was soon groaning under the weight of food, and the satisfying smell of burgers, sausages, chicken and salmon being cooked over coals filled the air. Wolves and Meteors gathered together to break bread and toast each other, and the sound of laughter and friendship rose into the summer night. The Meteors were celebrating the eighteenth birthday of one of their number, and bidding farewell to Di, stalwart of their team and a credit to the sport, who's off overseas for a while. It was a lovely occasion, following a great game. And somewhere above our heads, hidden by the cloud cover, our friends' Perseid namesakes were streaking through the heavens...