We are so not the champions

The story of the recent 115-2 basketball game reminds me of a summer spent playing intramural Softball in grad school, among various departments. The Psychology dept was short on players, so they asked me to join (the Environmental Science dept didn't have a team). We lost every game we played, and we lost badly. Entomology, Geology, Chemistry, and even the Philosophy department kicked our asses in Softball.

But there was one game. We never practiced, but for some reason everything came together that day. We weren't dropping fly balls, grounders didn't go through anyone's legs, and our hitting was on fire. We were winning for the first time all season, eventually by more than 10 runs. In the last inning, someone hit a line drive that got past their shortstop, and our loaded bases all came running home. The person that made the hit went for an inside-the-park homerun, but the throw was earlier than his running, and he took out the catcher with full force (he weighed over 250 lbs, the catcher probably 150 lbs) to score the run as the catcher dropped the ball in the collision. I felt pangs of guilt as our team celebrated our win.

The catcher was hurt and so the game ended. Later that night we found out the other team's poor performance was due to them being all German postdoctoral physics researchers who played their very first baseball game that day. D'oh!