August 14, 2006

Lost and Found: I found a Swatch watch in my bag (you know, the funny purple
one). To whom does it belong??? It is metallic with a black bracelet. Quite
large.

Author's note: Some new names will be appearing in this issue. Please
remember that all jesting, making fun of, exaggerations, distortions and
untruths are purely intentional and should be taken in good humor. Seldom
are names changed to protect the innocent.. are there any?

On with the news and views.

Well, what can I say.. another outstanding (at least most folks were still
standing at the end) weekend of DieHards brand fastpitch. It was certainly
our longest road trip to date. (not as long as the one planned next year to
Ulaanbaatar where we will introduce a new version played on horseback).

The logistics of the venture all seemed to come together quite smoothly.
Coaches Peter and Rado did an admirable job of arranging the hotel along
with pickup and delivery of various bodies at the Bratislava airport. There
were a couple of tense moments during the Friday departure as Cesar, Ben and
Riza got caught up in some real nasty traffic and only arrived at the
airport just as we were boarding. The four of us who were already there were
not going to let that plane off the ground without them. For some reason the
ground staff would not Johanny check in his glass of wine, but the delaying
tactics and an efficient crew finally saw all bodies and even their baggage
on to the same plane and off we went into the eastern sunset. The Monday
morning departure was a bit interesting also, as we quickly learned that our
special driver (Rado) had no idea of where the airport was located relative
to Pezinok and immediately headed for Brno. This was quickly noted by Jackie
and Reg at the first turn which was at least 180 degrees in the wrong
direction. Of course he did have a good excuse to explain his
disorientation: his roomy would not let him sleep and insisted on raiding
the hotel's lobby refrigerator until it was empty of beer which took until
6am. There was some muttering about ?I  hope there are some signs with a
plane on them soon?. Eventually some signs were detected and Ken quickly
picked up the correct word for the airport (airoportska) so we could get
there not only in pictures but alphabetically too. More on the Slovakian
language later in the issue. (for special attention by Steve)

The rooming arrangements were quite interesting. It seemed to go along the
lines of: senior management and chief beer consumers, the elderly, disabled
(once known as Rowdies) and assistant beer consumers, girlies and wine
consumers, couples and mini-consumers, and crazies who maxi-consume, never
sleep but can still play ball. So, you could say that we had all bases
covered, WHATEVER the situation. And there were definitely some "situations"
to be covered. As usual, curfew was strictly observed by all parties no
matter what room and most rooms could be found to be still empty after 3am ?
one of the strict rules set out by team management..

As usual the DHBTC (- 1) and all followers sprang into immediate action
after arrival Friday. The beer was quickly approved for consumption at 6.0
(we even sent a sample off by sms for approval by our missing member who
gave a thumbs up) and we began the epic task of trying to drain Pezinok of
beer. We did not manage to accomplish that goal (it isn?t that we didn?t
give it a DieHard try) but at least we succeeded at the ball park pub in
emptying the last barrel. Of course we did have the help of some other ball
teams over the weekend, but for a bunch of whimps from Geneva, we did pretty
well (always good to have a couple of ringers on the team. We managed to hit
all sorts of pubs in town, avoided staying out of jail (something that some
CZ team members apparently did not), and ended off on Sunday nite at a spot
catering to those who never want to stop and are short on smoke consumption.

On the fastpitch side of the weekend (yes, we did go to play fastpitch), we
put up a pretty respectable performance, coming in 3rd (out of 6) with a 2-2
record against some teams who probably thought that they would whip our
butts.  Had we not had a rainout, we might have been 3-2. In the first game,
the opposition made a few mistakes and then we got some key hits from Steve,
Didi and Johanny (who seemed to own that pitcher) to pull off an upset. In
our last game, we made a couple of mistakes and they did the same to us.
That?s how it goes folks. Never forget, it is a game of inches. We doubled
the number of hits we had compared to San Bonifacio, and against tougher
pitching. Our pitching did a pretty decent job too with Rado really starting
to smoke it in that last game. We did not get killed at all.  I look at is
as another payback game for next season. Whatdaya think team? Add those guys
to the PeterPan list? As far as I know, we will not be banned from Slovakia
for our performance.

Unfortunately, during the 2nd game, we had a David and Goliath collision out
in short center field where the little guy (Romain) put the big guy (Ken)
out of action. Romain should pick on someone his own size. It just ain?t
fair. However, by Sunday evening, I noticed that Ken?s ambidextrous
abilities were surfacing as he was able to consume both wine and beer with
his left hand while doing single-handed claps with his wounded right wing.
Also, the injury did not keep Ken out of uniform as he constructed a DieHard
sling which got him all sorts of sympathy from the hot flight attendants on
the trip back.

I think that we all made Peter's day (season? year?) by winning that 3rd
game. He was able to cut his tranquilizer consumption by 80 percent once it
was over and go back to flashing signals at normal light speed rather than
warp 2. (beam me to second Scotty).

For the play of the weekend award: this time it goes to a guy for the first
time. I have to go with Steve?s throw from left field to cut that guy down
at the plate to end an endless inning. He laid it right in there for Ben to
snag up and put the tag on the runner.

There was one other real sweet play too when Johanny doubled a runner off
first base after catching a line drive. That runner is now scheduled for
Baserunning 101 at his local ball park in outer Siberia..

And of course, no tournament that we attend can end without somebody being
kissed by Peter and Rado. Usually they go for the mayor or some other senior
ranking official from the host site, but this time they went for Charlie
after collecting another trophy for the club.. this one being quite useful
since it could hold liquid and was put to use later. After the closing
ceremonies the Karioki twins gave a short performance over the local PA
system. This lasted until some clever person pulled the plug since the
neighbors in the hood were starting to complain. Had the belle ragazze been
performing also, I?m sure that we would still be there.

I don't think people lost much weight on this trip. It was not that hot and
there was lots of food available by just dragging ourselves about 2 meters
to the one restaurant. On Sat nite, we had a really good meal of goose and
veggies all for amazing prices, all washed down with copious quantities of
beer and wine..

On Sunday nite Rado organized a wine tasting function for us which turned
out to be a long warm up for a long evening (for some folks anyway.. eh
Steve?) After 8 bottles of wine everybody was in a singing mood and the wine
bar was glad to see us off to disturb and keep somebody else up all nite. We
man