The Boys Can Play
The Czar apologizes for the length of what is, ultimately, a fairly personal post.
Muscovy, as many of you tourists know, is a quiet, sleepy suburb to the west of Chicago. Here, your Czar rules as a ferocious tyrant, even though we have a really nice mayor and alert and clever village council. However, Muscovy lives in the shadow of a vastly wealthy suburb that we shall call VWS.
Muscovy has a fleet of baseball teams, ranging from the youngsters playing tee ball all the way up to 12-to-13-year-olds playing very serious ball. Both the Царевич and the Цесаревич play for the Village. Царевич plays tee ball, which (let us face facts) is a bit of stretch to tolerate. However, as many of our Twitter fans know, the Цесаревич is old enough to play some solid baseball, and in fact, his team has lost only one game this year.
The team, to be charitable, makes the Bad News Bears look professional. Although some of Mucovy’s teams draft their players, the Цесаревич’s team was made up of kids who were left over for one reason or another…usually that they registered very late, as did we. But these are good kids, and the Coach took what he had. And worked.
They won their first game, and not by a little. Then the second. Then the third. As we said, they lost only one game (1-0) against the “favorite” team, the coach of which has enjoyed a long history of winning seasons. Yes, the first time the Цесаревич played his team, they crushed him. The second time, however, they did lose—but that first game broke up his undefeated season, and now he has lost his bragging rights, as he appears to have dropped a second game. Putting him, for the first time, in second place.
Okay, so the bottom line is that the Цесаревич has a great team, with kids who love to play the game. And they are the best team in all of Muscovy.
Each year, VWS challenges Muscovy to a game. They take their all-star players, stack the deck, and challenge a particular team to a showdown. VWS has not lost a challenge in a ridiculous amount of years, which is no surprise given how they stack the deck. Coach mentioned to the Czar that they play fairly dirty.
This year, early in the season, VWS picked the Цесаревич’s team for the challenge.
Today, despite numerous predictions of thunderstorms, we had beautiful weather in Muscovy. And today was the game.
Their team showed up with thousands of dollars in professional uniforms and training equipment. Our guys showed up with their own bail bondsman. Word was out that these misfit kids could play, and after a brief and often bizarre warm-up, they took the field. VWS, as the visitors, batted first.
The guys held them. All right, we made it to the third inning: however, VWS scored five runs in that inning, and the guys were a little bummed out.
At the bottom of the third, we scored two.
And so it held, back and forth…three up, three down…until the end of the game. 5-2, last inning. The VWS team, who argued balls and strikes the whole game, called our guys out at every close play, and even got into a shouting match over one close play, announced it was time to call the game due to the lateness of it. Coach told them to bite him: we were not quitting.
You guessed it. The Цесаревич’s team rallied and got four runs, including a walk-off single. The Цесаревич cracked a solid single, got on base, and was the fourth run we scored. No, he neither tied nor won the game, but he was involved in a powerful tipping moment when he, running from first to second, got tagged by the second baseman…who held the ball in his right hand, but tagged the Цесаревич with his left glove. Sorry: you gotta tag the runner with the ball, not the glove. Цесаревич was called safe at second, and came around to score on the next hit.
Yes: Muscovy beat VWS 6-5. Coach treated them all to innumerable milkshakes at the local shop, bought an entire tray of french fries for them, and even bought shakes for the brothers, sisters, and grandparents of the team. The boys were beside themselves with joy, including the catcher—who got hit with a pitch in the ankle, and may have broken something…but opened up a can of Man and finished the inning as a catcher. We did not know he was hurt until the third out when he fell down trying to walk back to the dugout. At the end of the game, two of the guys helped him shake hands with the other team.
The boys can play. And they have just gone into Muscovy legend.
And the Czar could not be any prouder of all of them.
Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.