Field of Econo Dreams

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.—The Charlottesville Econo Lodge, as one GW Softball team member proclaimed, is “too much econo, not enough lodge.” Yet this delightful motel will be our base of operations for the three days of softball mania that is the UVA Law 2008 Softball Invitational. With two men’s teams and two co-rec teams, expectations were high that GW would enjoy a level of success not seen since the memorable 1989 tourney, when Sal “Salazar” Marchiano pitched three no hitters and hit four grand slams to lead GW to the title over UVA Brown.

With the threat of rain ever present, the tournament began Friday night with the GW Colonials co-rec team facing off against Washington & Lee. After partaking in some delicious pizza at Mellow Mushroom off campus, several members of the GW Blue men’s team (myself included) attempted to get to the Colonials’ game. A long walk over turned into a longer one when, seeing the lights of the ball fields emerge from over the hills, I mistakenly led our group even farther away from the field. As we backtracked to the Econo Lodge, word came that the game was already over and that the Colonials had won. Clearly, they were better served with us not attending their game, so we vowed not to try to attend another one all weekend.

The day began early on Saturday for GW Blue, as we finally found the field we were searching for the previous night. The first opponent of the day was Washington University, who started the trash talking immediately by pointing out their superior ranking in US News and World Report. Lame. Their arrogance was soon rewarded as they hit several shots deep into the outfield. The team strategy quickly shifted from ending the inning quickly to ending the inning without giving up 10 runs. Unfortunately for us, the tourney mercy rule is that there is no mercy rule, so our deficit continued to grow as the innings progressed.

By the middle of the game, the umpire had had enough of our inability to score a run, and called us over from the dugout for a pep talk. “Now, I don’t know if you guys are confused as to the rules of the game, but the object is not to score the fewest runs. This isn’t golf,” he explained. This seemed to the trick, as several innings later, we successfully manufactured a run after the Wash U pitcher misplayed a ground ball, diving towards first to get our batter out. He failed to anticipate that we had suddenly learned how to play softball, and our runner on third easily scored. With the moral victory secured, the team left for an early lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings.

Lunch conversation soon gave way to intense strategy discussions. Our next opponent was Regent, who one team member described as a “Tier 4 Law School, but a Tier 1 softball talent.” Indeed, Regent finished second in 2007 and recruited a number of former Central League players from Japan. Realizing we would probably be no match, the team decided to continue to play extremely poorly so as to prolong the game and cause Regent’s players to injure themselves. This would severely disadvantage them in the playoffs and maybe GW Gold would have an easy path to the title. The strategy backfired, however, when we suffered several debilitating injuries of our own. With our bench supply of HGH extinguished, we decided on a new incentive to motivate a comeback: whoever made an error had to put a dollar in the error pot to be used to buy beer later that night. This also backfired, as we committed even more errors.

“The only way to accurately analogize the team's performance is if a major league team lost all of its position players to injury, causing the whole team to hit and field as poorly as pitchers. And we did not have Micah Owings or Dontrelle Willis,” recounted our team captain later that night.

Luckily, GW Gold was having an opposite level of success, cruising to two victories in their first two games. Our attempts to steal some of their players for our final game against Ohio State failed miserably, bur they did stick around to “cheer” us on. After another heartbreaking loss with few injuries to Ohio State and several more injuries and errors for us, the team made its way to the barbeque to try to steal another team’s jerseys and sneak into the playoffs on Sunday. With $29 in the error pot, we decided to buy a delicious bottle of Canadian Mist, but our team manager had absconded with the money, and we were forced to partake in the free beer at the evening’s festivities.

The rain predicted for the weekend finally arrived Sunday morning, but that did not deter GW Gold from trudging out to the mud-soaked field for the men’s playoffs. The unrelenting precipitation triggered a new set of rules designed to speed up the games. Each batter would only get one pitch to hit from his team’s pitcher, no matter what the quality of the pitch. This seemed pretty stupid to every one involved, as one player described it as “deciding the NBA Finals with a slam dunk contest.” Despite the rule change, GW Gold earned a hard-fought victory against Boston College to advance to play our old nemesis, Regent. Using bats handcrafted by Pat Robertson himself in his underground lair deep beneath the earth’s surface, Regent ended GW’s last title hope of the 2008 tournament, holding the team scoreless (I would like to take this opportunity to mention that GW Blue succeeded where GW Gold failed in that we were able to score a run against the Fightin’ Robertsons).

While we left without any hardware to show for our efforts, GW Blue has its sights on greatness in 2009. Unfortunately, the entire team is graduating, so we are actively seeking replacements, lest we all be forced to apply to the LLM program to carry on our own legacy. If you have any baseball, softball, European handball, or korfball experience, consider trying out for a spot on the historic GW Blue squad next year. You can help continue the legacy of (mostly) error-free baseball!