The Fountain of Youth

Dejection abounds as my baseball team yesterday lost the Ponce de Leon divisional championship game in the bottom of the ninth inning. We were up by two runs with one out and on the verge of repeating our championship from last season, but the cruel bitches that are the baseball gods intervened and took it away from us.

I was the starting pitcher for the game yesterday, getting off to a rocky start before finding my groove. I ended up giving up 6 runs, 2 earned, in five innings, which is the limit pitchers can throw in the league.

The Ponce de Leon baseball league is a recreational league for men 30 and over. They have 8-10 game seasons in the Spring, Summer, and Fall, and the games are played on the weekends. It's definitely for weekend warriors who wish to relive part of their youth and who think softball is a poor substitution. A five-tool Ponce player can: ground-out, fly-out, get caught steeling, commit a fielding and a throwing error.

The league's motto is, "To Play Baseball Once Again Was To Have Found The Fountain of Youth That Ponce De Leon Had Searched For In Vain."

There were other mottos that were considered, including:

• We Pull More Muscles Before 9am Than Most People Pull Their Whole Lives
• Boosting Monday Sales of Ibuprofen Since 1986
• Where's the Icy Hot?!
• My Hamstring! Ouch, Fuck!