The Rope

Now you may read this and say after, "SoulSlam is making this up". But I am not.

In addition to my coaching in town for travel and in-town baseball teams (4), I serve as the defacto tournament director for our travel teams. To be honest, it's a lot of work, a lot of BS, and appreciated by about 3 other people, who also do the work and deal with the BS. So hat's off to them.

Anyway, we had a game on Friday night as part of pool play at 6PM (the team scheduled to play mine at 8PM cancelled. Reason - the coach is a loser). After that game ended, we got the fields ready for a girl's fastpitch softball game. So besides everything else, the groundcrew (that would be the same people referenced above) were getting the field changed over, groomed and lined.

I walk past 3B and their are two guys with a brown grocery bag. Since I don't know their names, let's call them Lloyd and Harry. Apparently they are fathers of kids from the team that just won. Well, they proceed to pull out a rope from the bag. Long. Multi-colored. The kind of rope that comes in a toybox. So I see this and ask "hey if you wan't to go double-dutch, take it to off the field, fellas!"

Watching these two interact, they kept saying "it's too short I tell ya, you're gonna owe me a beer!". They then proceed to measure the distance from home to the portable mound. Two grown men.

Then Harry says to me (at least spoke in my general direction), "hah, I knew it was short!". so I look and notice they are measuring the distance wrong. They are using the front of home plate. So I explain, at which point these two extreme measurers move the rope back to the right spot, which Harry then yells "still too short!".

So the babbling began. Babble about it being short to me from two absolute morons. In baggy sweatshirts. To which I explain that no, it was exactly 46'. I flip the portable mound up on it's side to roll off the field and these two idjits are still in my ear. So after a long week of no thanks and work, work, work, I tell the two of them the following; "if you two effin' idiots want to come down tomorrow to set up the damn fields, we'd love to have you two dopes!". Now, I don't want to sound like I am menacing, but I guess I am. They skulk off to the 3B line with their rope. Story over, no.

No.

The chatter continues. So much so that the guy who runs the program, aka "the commish" gets pissed. So he grabs a tape measure and stalks to the mound. And we measure out 46'. Then tell Harry and Lloyd to come out and see, no, better yet, bring out the rope and compare. Now we're talking. H & L seems a little reluctant since they think they have won. so they unravel the rope (actually just Lloyd)the full length -which apparently was about 46'6". About a half foot longer than needed. The stammering occurs...and the comment by the commish asking where the numbers were on the rope.

So at this point I walk past Harry who is on the side saying, "doesn't matter, no harm, doesn't matter" over and over like Rain Man. But there act has angered SoulSlam to the point of spontaneous head-explosions, so I veer his way and tell him in no uncertain terms to "get the eff out of here before I choke you two quads with that rope!"

hang 'em high