OEtL: The Cleansing (Part 2 of 2)

On the End of the Line is a periodic series casting light upon seminal events in Sea Kitten history

Continued from OETL: The Schneid

July 16, 2014 After retreating to Harmony Bar & Grill for now customary post-game wound-licking and fur-smoothing after an 11-1 beatdown at the hands of Pitches be Crazy, Sea Kittens began to dwell upon what had become of the once-proud, if wildly inconsistent and ever-entertaining franchise.  As customary, manager Joe Hennessy brought the scorebook inside with him,  in case an RBI needed to be tallied or a discussion of a hit vs. error ruling was needed, but really just as his woobie.  Fifteen consecutive losses.  More than a year had passed since Sea Kittens had trotted off winners. July 17, 2013 and the memory of a 6-4 season in the 2013 summer season was hazy and distant.   Clearly Sea Kittens had brought the full wrath of softball gods upon them.  Three Sea kittens- Red Shoes Hewitt, Jazzy Leda Nath, and Tom Kutzy Kutz had played their entire careers without experiencing a  Sea Kitten victory.  Hewitt and Nath had endured 13 of The Schneid’s 15 games. As Hennessy persused the scorebook, he made a startling realization:  since had starting scribbling lineups and keeping score in the Kittens’ second scorebook, they had not won.  Fifteen games, fifteen sordid box-score stories of losses by all imaginable methods:  blowouts and one-run losses, early leads lost late, Sea Kitten Innings, a shutout loss and a 7-run seventh.  There were probably other, less easily imagined ways, too.  Mama Cat O’Brien took in this information and uttered two words: “Burn it.” She said.

Burn it. -Mama Cat O’Brien

Hennessy considered the possibility, as other joined the incendiary chorus.  He shuddered, imagining the possibility of lost data, scrambling for a way to back it up.  “I suppose I could copy the pages and we could burn the scorebook,” he offered. “No.” Said O’Brien.  “It would still exist. Burn it.” The arsonists clamored. Considering the plight of the bedraggled squad and weighing the accursed scorebook in his hands, he knew the team was right. Perhaps what followed was his idea, or perhaps something that came from O’Brien, Zen Master Rowe, Heidibadger Nelson, Jonny Jon Jon Shabiudu Hansen, Jr., KJ Johnson or any of the other Cats present at the bar that night, but the team agreed that the scorebook be burned as an offering to Softball Gods and its ashes be worn to please them, painted upon the Sea Kittens faces as they took the diamond the following week.

July 23, 2014 And so the scorebook burned, in a small charcoal grill doubling as a sacrificial urn.   At 7:45 PM Sea kittens held the team’s first-ever Whiskers Ceremony. Quietly and respectfully the cats each tore a page from the book and set it alight, and finally the remaining blank pages were added.  As the flames flickered out the ashes were cooled, an each Sea Kitten dipped fingers into the slurry and painted whiskers upon his or her face.  “Lo!”  Roared Sea Kittens, ready to sink claws into Caribou.  “Dost have we done your bidding and cleansed ourselves!”  At least it seems something like that would have been appropriate. Losers of fifteen consecutive games, Harmony Sea Kittens took the field, painted for battle. (ed. note: For his part, Hennessy dug out a scorebook used by the Southern Illinois University cooperative Fishery Unit’s Fisheads softball squad, stored in his personal archives since October, 1997, and kept score in that until June, 2015, when he returned to MC Sports and tried again, this time ignoring the overtures of the Man in the White Fedora. remarkably, no stories about the game were published at the time.  The following is a re-creation of the contest written for the occasion of its 4th anniversary.)

¡Kittens End the Schneid!

We get by with a little help from our friends

Unsure how the Softball Gods would respond to their pregame sacrificial offering, Harmony Sea Kittens trotted onto Olbrich Field #2 looking to end a 15-game losing streak that had covered much of the past calendar year. Harmony had dropped its five Pittsburgh league games and after being relegated to Denver League, dropped its first four there, too.  Now it stood at 0-9 entering the season’s final week of play. Standing across the diamond were the upstart Caribou Bou Crew, enjoying a successful season in which it had captured the MSCR Buffalo League first-half title and were sent up to Denver League for its final five games.   Remarkably short-handed for the contest, Sea Kittens called upon fall roster invitee Tiffany Virag and signed three players from the Infrared Sox and Baltimore Factorioles to one-game contracts:  Jenna Ryon, Mike Wood, and Josh Weber.

Bou Crew struck first, tagging Sea Kitten starter David Zen Master Rowe for two first-inning runs, and when Rowe opened the Harmony half of the inning with a pop up to pitcher, it seemed that the gods had dismissed the Kittens’ cries as inadequate or disapproved of its use of ringers, even if they came from a league a notch below the Denver League.  But perhaps the palliative smoke had simply not yet reached the Great Diamond Beyond.  Mama Cat O’Brien singled, Joe Hennessy reached on a miscue by the Crew’s third baseman, and Virag walked to load the bases. Boom Boom Magyera knocked a hit to halve the Cats’ deficit, and Heidibadger Nelson singled to bring home the tying run.  Another boot on the Bou hot corner lead to a third Harmony run, and Meghan MeWe Williams singled to give Harmony a 4-2 edge.  When O’Brien and Hennessy drove home runs in the bottom the second to increase Sea Kittens’ advantage to 6-2, it was a familiar position for the squad- positive and positively uncomfortable.  Thrice in its past four games Harmony had blown leads at least that large. Bou Crew chipped home a run in the third and shut down Los Gatitos in the bottom of the inning, who returned the goose egg in the top of the fourth to send the game to the halfway mark 6-3 Sea Kittens.

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And then it began.  Perhaps unfamiliar with how Sea Kittens had rolled for the past 11 months, Wood, Ryon, and Weber collected consecutive hits to open the Harmony fourth with bases loaded and none out.  Rowe singled home a run, O’Brien walked to bring home another, and the Cats started to sniff Caribou blood.  Hennessy lofted his second sacrifice fly of the game to bring home Weber.  Virag walked again to re-load the bases, and Magyera stroked a 2-run single to extend the Kitten lead to 11-3.  Nelson kept the hit parade going with an RBI knock of her own, and with two down the Factoriole trio banged consecutive singles for the second time in the frame and brought the Sea Kitten fourth-inning tally to 10. With a 16-3 lead and nine outs to play, Sea Kittens began to dare to believe, and promptly allowed three runs to bring them back to their skittish senses.  But the offense stayed in gear, tallying four more runs to extend the advantage to 20-6, and even a four-run seventh from the Bou Crew didn’t induce Sea Kitten tremors.  Sea Kittens ended The Schneid. Game Notes, Salmon Snacks, and Box Score Here