Our losing season

The 2012 Chapel Hill men's softball season will put my pessimistic honesty to the test. I am already off to a challenged start. I could not figure how to start such a post, so I searched for my copy of Pat Conroy's My Losing Season, a memoir of his tenure as a college basketball player at The Citadel. I planned to find a suitable epigraph that would give me some direction and perspective. I evidently never found the book, so here is my own perspective.

I wanted to play on a softball team for years. A broken face and concussion interrupted and practically ended my high school baseball career in April 2002. That loose end annoyed me for a decade. In 2007 I socialized my way onto a decent team in Charlotte and enjoyed playing second and first base for a few Sunday-night games. My then-girlfriend-now-fiancee watched me play that season and decided she wanted to marry a man who owned a jock strap.

After moving to Chapel Hill in 2008, I either coached junior varsity baseball in the spring or forgot to register for the local league until it was too late. What I did not know then is that many of the teams had been in the league for longer than I had been alive and never forgot to fill the schedule to capacity by an early March deadline. Last winter, two years removed from my brief coaching career, I finally registered on time. I sent an e-mail to my friend Roddy to ask him to play and recruit other guys to field a complete team. We decided to compose a roster of our friends regardless of their skill level. Anybody with any experience would be a pleasant accident.

In preseason practices we found that about half of our guys were accidents. But even the other guys could hit a 12-inch, slow-pitched softball lofted to a mouthwatering height of six to ten feet. We figured that defense would be our primary weakness. Judging fly balls, throwing, catching and understanding game situations were all obvious concerns that we subconsciously ignored. This was easy to do because our least experienced players were also our most optimistic. As the team's player manager, I found this quite endearing. Our practices consisted of nothing more than batting practice and ball shagging. We christened our team with $3 uniforms, the name George's Pitches and the Pancake Batters, and a bat with the foreboding label "Freak Show." I anxiously awaited our first rundown.

I attended the preseason coaches meeting and discovered that the next youngest guy was at least 10 years older than me. Another fellow wore two knee braces. To the meeting. Things were looking up for the Pitches. One purpose of the meeting was to debate a couple flexible rules. The American Softball Association of America had recently lowered the maximum pitch height from 12 to 10 feet to make the ball easier to hit. To my surprise, all of the coaches wanted the ceiling to remain at 12 feet. The guy with two knee braces really wanted to keep the ceiling at 12 feet.

"Two years ago I pitched to a guy who broke my arm," another guy wearily said. "I didn't see the ball, but I felt it."

I was in the presence of older men without the reflexes to protect themselves against a 50-foot line drive. I felt a wicked urge to go against the grain on the issue and did exactly that, but my vote meant nothing. The ceiling stayed at 12 feet by a 7-to-1 vote. I left the meeting without making a single friend.

We opened the season against a church team composed of middle-aged men with scant athletic ability but more than 20 years of league experience. Some of them had children who attended the high school at which several of my teammates and I taught. I did not know it at the time, but some of those children attended that game to watch their daddies invoke the mercy rule on their sprightly, young teachers. A botched play at the plate saw one of those daddies run over our starting pitcher, whose shoulder turned a puffy yellow. He sat out the first half of the season while it healed. I saw the son of one of those opposing players at school a couple weeks and many consecutive losses later.

"I heard you have a softball team," he said to me.

"I do," I replied, still unaware of how he knew how I spent my Monday and Wednesday nights. "A few teachers play on the team." I went on to identify them by name.

"You have a young team," he said.

"Yup," I said. "We are young compared to the other teams."

"Don't you think it's strange that older guys beat you by double digits?" he fired.

"No," I said and proceeded to explain our plight. We discovered early that our defense, which actually improved as the season progressed, was not our only problem. Offense was our other problem. Optimistically speaking, those were our only two problems. Hitting a slow-pitched softball was easy, but we failed to hit it where the fielders were not. We had no guys with home run power and no guys with the patience to wait for a good pitch. They all looked good to us. The ball was big and yellow and slow. It was hard to miss but harder to resist.

To say that hitting was our only offensive problem would have been an understatement. We overran bases that could not be overrun. We stopped on bases that should have been overrun. We even took an illegal lead off and paid the price with an automatic out. If Yogi Berra was watching, he was also blushing. When I was about to introduce our defensive troubles to the bold 17-year-old, he tired of listening and interrupted my monologue.

"My dad almost killed your pitcher."

It was not long after that short conversation that I was running to second base on a fielder's choice and tore my hamstring, which had never happened to me before. Without a good reason to heal or someone to tell me otherwise, I decided to play the rest of the season with the injury. I pulled, strained or tore that hamstring at least a dozen times. I learned to run slow and play out of position to protect it, but fielding ground balls was painful.

One night my fiancee yelped when I turned around in my boxers. A large purple stain had suddenly appeared on the back of my leg above the knee. Worried that it was a dangerous infection or bite, I went to my doctor. He explained that my hamstring was bleeding from repeated tears. Somehow that made me deeply satisfied.

At some point we found ourselves with no wins, ten losses, another sidelined infielder and many bloody knees (and many bloody bedsheets and therefore many bulky, bloody loads of laundry). Those optimists I mentioned earlier still thought we could win a game. I was certain we would not. My fiancee often asked me whether we would win, and I invariably said no. Do not misunderstand. I played with a great attitude and cheered my teammates. I enjoyed every inning until we played a Sunday-night game against the second-worst team in the league and lost by 20 in three innings that lasted for 25 minutes.

The game was a makeup on an irregular night, so most of our best players were absent. Our defense was really something to see; I think we committed eight or nine errors in three plays. The game ended when the home-plate umpire spoke a few inaudible words with the scorekeeper and walked back to the field.

"Who is the coach?" he asked only loud enough for the infield to hear. I raised my hand. He dropped his head so that the brim of his cap covered his eyes. He gave me the grimmest come-hither gesture I have seen in 28 years. I jogged toward him with the awful feeling of knowing exactly what would be said and that it did not need to be said. It was insulting. I was suddenly the face of something I did not want to represent on my own.

"It looks like we've reached the third-inning run rule here," he said with eyes still directed downward. "I'm very sorry."

"OK," I said. I wished I had something better to say.

The dugout after that game was tense. Losing by the mercy rule was nothing new, but the 20-in-the-third rule felt quite fresh. Our earnest left-center fielder explained to everyone that we should be embarrassed. I already was only because of the umpire's odd gesture. But I also knew that our lineup was the weakest it had been all year. Even crazier than the humiliating loss was that we all knew we could easily beat the team that had just beat us by 20 in three innings.

"Did they cancel the game?" my fiancee asked when I walked in the door 40 minutes early.

"No," I said. "We lost in 25 minutes by 20 runs. We will beat them tomorrow."

I was not showing resolve. I just knew we would have a better lineup than them in 24 hours, and we did. We won by 2. They were surprised, but we weren't. Still, we celebrated on Franklin Street and recounted the game inning by inning. We thought it might be the only opportunity. A day later I refreshed the league results page a dozen times. I wanted to see a 1 in that first column. It was important to me. Winning is more fun when you're a loser.

We beat the same team a second time a week later to take two of three from them. Then we lost in the first round of the playoffs to the best team in the league. As was the case ten years ago, I did not want it to end. At least now I can regret this season instead of my lost season of 2002.

We will be back next year. And maybe with several strokes of good luck and good health we will be back in 38 years, which is exactly how long one of the current teams in the league has competed. Their roster has undergone a few makeovers, but their name is still McCauley Street and their two white-haired founding players are still swinging away.

Amen. 

How I feel about losing to Duke

I went to the Dean Dome last night and saw my favored Tar Heels lose to the Duke Blue Devils after earning a falsely secure 10-point lead with 2:38 to play. The comeback was the result of a perfect storm of missed free throws, turnovers, a player control foul and an own field goal. Duke escaped defeat with a 3-pointer only after the game clock had expired.

A mere 20 seconds earlier I had calmly explained to my mom that Tyler Zeller's first made free throw, which extended our lead to 2, meant nothing unless he also made the second. I knew that Duke would shoot a 3 even if they trailed by 2. Zeller missed his second. Duke rebounded. Austin Rivers dribbled down the clock while he enjoyed a mismatch with Zeller that eventually gave more than the space he needed to release the game-winning 3-pointer with less than a second on the clock. The backboard light went off a millisecond before the ball slipped through the rim like it was greased with Crisco.

It took the wind out of me. I felt like the bottom of my stomach had opened so that the cheese fries and Yuengling inside could spill to the concrete floor and onto the rows in front of me. I acted as cool as I could and sensed the rest of the 21,000+ fans doing the same, but I could not look. I was too miserable to be willing to see anyone's misery.

"We did not deserve to win," I said to my mom before I left. The walk up the hill, which I had expected to be a celebratory sprint to Franklin Street only minutes before, was laced with frightening screams of frustration from passing cars and high dormitory balconies. In any other situation I might have dialed 911. We walked in silence to Franklin Street. Disappointed students still filled the coffee shops and bars. The rush was off.

This game and that shot will be on ESPN Classic every time we play Duke, I thought. I will have to watch that shot on TV again minutes before we play them in Durham. 

I will close my eyes.

"I'm over it already," I lied to my fiancee to make her think I was more together than I was. We drove home. I read the few already published stories to try to understand what had happened in the last two and a half minutes of the game. I sent an e-mail to my closest Carolina friends to ask whether this was the most brutal loss in series history. I felt like I had to know. The e-mail's subject was "Honest question. Read when calm." I knew I would wonder whether my memory was a dream the next morning; I dreaded that futile moment of hope. My head hit the pillow, and I was almost asleep three hours later.

Morning was unkind. My alumnus carpool buddy canceled, so I drove the half hour to work with only my thoughts. I tried to count all the Duke fans I saw on a daily basis and was pleased that I could only think of two. I decided to be the first to mention the game to each one so they could not catch me off guard. Mike and Mike on ESPN Radio made only a brief mention of the game. They were more excited that Will Ferrell announced the starting lineups at the New Orleans Hornets game. The audio made me laugh, so I decided to e-mail the YouTube video to my closest Carolina friends. I could not imagine any of them smiling until at least noon, but maybe they could if I could. I worried about some of them. None had replied to my e-mail. Perhaps none had been calm enough to even read it.

We were on the better end of a game like that against Duke in 2005, I thought as I pulled into the school lot. But now I realize that even that game did not have a do-or-die buzzer beater without the calming influence of a timeout. This game was jarringly offensive. This game made me angry.

My instinct all day was to not talk about the game. My friends must have felt the same. A colleague who approached me about Carolina football's National Signing Day results last week barely glanced in my direction today, and that's fine. The only person with whom I discussed the game in person was a Duke fan at work. I congratulated him with a rough half hug.

You might wonder why I am writing about this. Of course Duke fans might read this and foam at the mouth, but that's fine too. I am writing this for Carolina fans who feel the same way I do. We all talk about how we come together during the game, but now we will stick together after the game. That is easier for me if I know someone else feels the same way I do. I should probably call those friends who did not reply to my e-mail.

Roy said the best thing about last night's loss was that it should tick off the team and make them more determined to work harder. The best thing about it from a Carolina fan's perspective was that it made the impending second match-up one of the biggest in the rivalry's history. Carolina fans will be way up for the game in their homes or out with friends. The world will not see that; they will have to settle for Cameron Indoor Stadium, which Duke students struggle to fill. The last two minutes of last night's game spilled gasoline on Tobacco Road. Now it is up to the Heels and us, their fans, to light a match on March 3 at 7 p.m.

I hope this video will make you smile in the meantime.

Unexpected Carolina sports weekend

The Dec. 9-11 weekend was unexpectedly phenomenal on three athletic fronts that had almost nothing to do with the Carolina victory over Long Beach State Saturday evening.

My fiancee and my friend Daniel's wife, Kathryn, lured him and me to Franklin Street at 10 a.m. Saturday for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Holiday Parade. We both resisted at first but caved when we discovered the other had received as much pressure to attend.

"I'll go if J.D. goes," Daniel reportedly said. I had not been out of bed for 20 minutes by the time we accidentally set our lawn chairs next to a dozen children who could barely walk.

The parade was surprisingly enjoyable despite boasting roughly three too many martial arts groups for elementary and middle school children. The RE/MAX float's hot air balloon flame nearly ignited a crosswalk stoplight. The Orange County Jammers Senior Cheerleading Group was a nice surprise.

But my favorite moment came from a trailer full of adolescent girls who signed Christmas carols for the deaf while a musical pickup truck towed them along. The driver either struggled with a sticky accelerator pedal or exercised a sharp sense of humor when he suddenly jolted the truck and trailer forward. The girls lurched for an overhead bar to stay on board. They smiled after a few tense seconds, released their grips and began to cautiously sign what was left of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" with noticeably less excitement.

"There goes Roy," Daniel said just as the parade ended. I spun around in time to see Carolina head basketball coach Roy Williams walk into Chapel Hill Sportswear.

We nervously stood on the sidewalk for a few minutes while we deliberated what to do. Of course we followed him. The receptionist informed me that Roy was upstairs. When we were halfway up the steps, Roy began his descent with a little boy. We were unsure of what to say and whether we should awkwardly continue our climb. Kathryn broke the ice.

"Is he yours?" she asked.

"He's mine all right," he said, patting the big-eyed kid on the head. We smiled and walked up the rest of the stairs. Roy led the Heels to victory over Long Beach State that night after trailing by five at intermission.

The Carolina men's soccer team won its second national championship against in-state rival Charlotte the next evening. Before the game began, I read a national sports story that was most uniquely relevant to me.

Former Carolina quarterback T.J. Yates led his Houston Texans on a fourth-quarter comeback to defeat the Cincinnati Bengals and clinch the franchise's first playoff berth with a last-second pass to wide receiver Kevin Walter, an alumnus of my alma mater Libertyville High School. Yates has been unexpectedly under center for nearly three games after the starter and backup went down with long-term injuries. The media seemed to write off the Texans, but Yates has proved them wrong with an unblemished record. Yates is the first ever Tar Heel to be a starting quarterback in the NFL. I was eager to spread the news to my friends until I realized that nobody in the world could appreciate the news as much as I did.

Go Heels. Go 'Cats.

The doctor and the accountant

My friend Ryan is a doctor. He is also a brother, but I rarely see him in this role since he and his only sibling, Chris, live many miles apart. Each time I see them together I am struck by their similarities: tall, athletic, intelligent, talented, polite, humble and kind. They both seem to be the first to listen and the last to speak with confident, knowing voices. They treat each other with at least as much respect as they treat their friends.

Years ago I was walking with the two of them and a friend to downtown Chapel Hill. I must have been focused on the friend because I remember turning back to the brothers and finding them tangled like rabid shoelaces on the ground. The other friend and I halted to gauge the circumstances of the bizarre image. They threw no punches and said no words. They were not upset, but they grunted every few seconds like Greco-Roman wrestlers as they rolled along the paved road, over the curb and onto the grass. With their knees settled on something soft, they gave each other a long moment of rest until Ryan lunged for a temporary advantage. They continued like this for another four minutes until they rumbled dangerously close to the hood of an unknown parked car. They separated without a word to each other and seemed indifferent to the reactions of their company. They were hypnotized.

"I don't have a brother," I stammered.

After a few minutes of limping off their nicks and brushing off the dirt, they explained that they wrestled on a near-regular basis without any provocation. Their simple explanation was wholly consistent with their honest personalities. I did not press with questions.

Ryan returned to Chapel Hill this weekend from his medical residency in Brooklyn for the Carolina-Louisville game, and his brother did the same from his accounting job in Charlotte. We partied enough Friday night to postpone the tailgate until after the noon game. We cooked hot dogs, burgers and sausages and drank home brews while we listened to Wake Forest upset Florida State on my car radio, which fell silent after the game ended. I checked to see if my battery was dead. It was. I called AAA, and we began an hour-long wait. Ryan took a trip to the dormitory bathroom. We found a flying disc in my trunk and threw it around.

"I wonder if I can hit Ryan from here," Chris said as he eyed Ryan's return from 240 feet away. He threw a wide-arcing backhand toss that flew for at least five seconds before plunking an unsuspecting Ryan, whose eyes were directed downward at a set of stairs, square in the stomach. Ryan picked up the disc and ran at Chris. Had I known what would happen for the next five minutes, I would have begun recording immediately. I got the hint minutes later when I saw the two tangled again in the mulch beside the parking lot. Ryan freed a hand to grab a littered, plastic salad tray with lettuce and tomatoes, dumped it on top of Chris, and whopped him on the head with it until it snapped into pieces. An elder fellow tailgater walked by with a concerned look.

"They're brothers," I said. "One's a doctor. The other is an accountant. They'll work it out."

He nodded. I will embed the rest of the skirmish below.