Our Championship Season

When the second season of NUMB3RS began, I learned that the show was deficient one of the most important elements a local LA television production must have.  A softball team.  This was quickly addressed by assembling a Numb3rs team to compete in the Prime Time Softball League.  That’s right.  The Prime Time Softball League.  A league of softball teams made up of producers, cast and crew from various television shows: Sons of Anarchy, Grey’s Anatomy, CSI, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, etc.  http://www.ptsl.net/Root.cfm

Most teams are made up of a mix of people from the various production departments, with electricians and teamsters probably being the most represented.  But it is also possible to spot an actor or two competing on the hot, sunny fields of the Hjelte Recreation area. Clark Gregg of The New Adventures of Old Christine regularly subjected himself to the dangers of playing defense on the left side of the infield.  Natasha Henstridge swung a bat for Eli Stone.  And our own David Krumholtz ranged right field for Numb3rs. 

Depsite being a long time rock climber and hiker, I quickly fell in love with softball.  The team dynamic, the casualness, whacking a ball, sliding in the dirt, ice cold beer cans to apply to tendon strains and muscle bruises.  It’s America.  If softball hadn’t been named softball, it would have been named, “Fuck yeah, America!”   Or something similar.

For five years Numb3rs fielded a strong team and we made the playoffs every year.  But every year we were bounced in the first round.  Usually by our arch nemisis, The Tonight Show.  While the league is considered to be a co-ed, casual recreation league, The Tonight Show team took it very seriously and loaded their team with talent … and the manager of our team knew the manager of their team from another softball league and they hated each other.  Whenever we met, The Tonight Show beat us into the ground.  Spanked us.  Owned us.  And trash talked us the whole time.  And we usually met them in the playoffs.  Until, that is, the final sixth season of Numb3rs.  Our last regular season game was against The Tonight Show.  If we could beat them, we could secure a place in the standings that would give us the ability not to face them in the first round of the playoffs.

The Numb3rs softball team (wearing “CalSci Softball” unforms) had it’s finest outing.  It  was a game of deep redemption and hitting the ball squarely and hard.  It included a clutch grand slam from the assistant caterer. 

And then … like every year … we got our asses handed to us in the first playoff game.

Spring 2011.  I hadn’t played softball since the last Numb3rs playoff game.  And incidently, in our five playoff losses, I made the last out in four of them.  And when I say “out,” I really mean “pathetic plate appearance that ended well for the other team.”

Looking for something akin to a Tosh 2.0 web redemption, I signed up with a local Pasadena MLB league.  I really just wanted to get out on the field, get a little better, avoid injuries.  And yeah, I wanted another shot at more of those situations in meaningful, tight games.  I wanted a chance to perform in a way where I might actually not completely choke.

When you sign up with MLB Pasadena softball, you email in your name and info and wait to see if the manager of a team is looking for a “free agent” player.   I had no idea how long it would take before a team called, but I was prepared for it to take a few months, maybe longer.  Most teams are a collection of friends or co-workers and it’s not that easy to just find a softball team to join.  However, six days later a woman named Estella calls me.  Do I want to play?  Sure.  Come to the next game and bring a check for the league fee.  I’ll be there.

I get there and hunt down the manager of the Blackhawks.  Talk to some of the players.  Find out the team I’ve signed up on is specifically Blackhawks 3.  There are six, maybe seven, maybe eight softballs teams all run and organized by Estella.  All named the Blackhawks.  She doesn’t play (at least now), but she loves softball and she obviously loves putting together teams.  Which, when you think about it, is a wonderful social service.  Providing so many teams provides the ability for anyone who wants to play to have the chance.

I joined Blackhawks 3 halfway through the spring season.  I didn’t know that the serious softball leagues have several different divisions for level of ability.  Blackhawks was a men’s Division E team.  They had just come off the winter season winning their division championship.  Now they were 0-5 in the spring.  We went on to finish 1-9.

This summer season, however, Blackhawks 3 finished in first place with an 8-2 record.  The division had 10 teams.  At least six of those teams were high-caliber and capable of beating each other on any given day.  Many of our games were close.  A couple walk off hits.  Game-saving defensive plays.  For being a team assembled just by guys who wanted to play, signing up and getting a call from Estella, this was a group of players who were fun, but very smart and passionate about the game, and while some knew each other from previous teams, the newbies were made to feel right at home.  The success of the team came from guys with skills and brains and terrific team-first mentality.  I had never seen a team fight so hard defensively to hold other teams to as few runs as possible. 

At the end of the MLS season, the two top teams in the division have a single championship game.  The summer season championship was Blackhawks 3 vs Los Pistoleros.  Blackhawks prevail 22-20 in a very well played game by both teams.

Did I find myself in key situations at the plate?  Kinda.  The entire team was hitting and having smart at-bats, so I never found myself in that game-winning or game-losing plate appearance.  But as the score indicates, the game was extremely close and every RBI was important.  My goal was to get on base anyway that I could and I’m happy to report I accomplished that goal every time I came to the plate.  I did not choke.

What do you get when you win a championship in Pasadena MLS?  Your team gets bumped up to the next highest league.  That meant Blackhawks 3 would play their Fall season in D division … the toughest division in Pasadena MLS.

The first two games of the Fall season Blackhawks 3 was thumped 14-24 and 5-28.

Awwww … softball.

incoherentmumbling:

and here we have a kraken attacking a ship…

this looks familiar…

As a kid, I never appreciated the natural splendor of Cape Cod. (As a kid, I didn’t appreciate much that wasn’t found in the local cinema.) But when I left to go away to college and began living in New York City, suddenly all that changed. As a young adult, my eyes and aesthetics were finally recalibrated by the elegant, geographically fragile landscape.

I still consider this to be my best Cape photo, despite having shot it thirty years ago. I didn’t know much about photography except that good landscape photographers always shoot in early morning or late afternoon/early evening light. Not being a morning person, I would grab my Nikon FM and some Kodachrome and hike out into the dunes of Sandy Neck near the end of the day. The primary goal was to be alone. The secondary goal was to experiment with film.

Peter MacNicol hates getting his picture taken.  He hates it so much he refused to accept a photo book I made of the cast and crew of Numb3rs because Peter knew there would be photos of himself in it.

This is my favorite pic of Peter.

An extraordinary actor, Peter’s face is a fascinating, compelling personal landscape.  I loved to take pictures of him, but normally I had to stand far back and use a very long lens.   For this shot, I was using a wide angle, and miracle of miracles, for the one and only time in six years, Peter, for some unknown reason, smiled warmly at my camera.

I grew up in New England at a time when hockey was the sport to play and follow.  The days of the old Boston Garden, Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, Johnny Bucyk and Derek Sanderson was a Golden Era of hockey in Boston and as a kid, if you weren’t slapping the puck around a rink, you were passing and shooting a dead tennis ball on the asphalt in your daily street hockey game.

My own hockey adventure started out by sitting on cold bleachers in local rinks watching my brother play.  Eventually, I became fixated on the position of goaltender.  It seemed like the greatest position to play in all of sports.  And so, without knowing what I was doing and with minimal skating skills, I began scrounging enough money to start buying my own set of pads.  My first pair of second-hand goalie skates featured a broken blade on the left skate that would send sickening vibrations through my leg every time I made a skate save on a hard shot to my left.  My first set of leg pads only covered three inches above my knees.

Still, I was consumed with a determination to play goalie.  And when I did get the chance to stand between the pipes, I loved every minute of it and was willing to get up at 5am for 6am games played in an open, freezing rink before having to head off to school.

All during these years, though, our beloved Bruins were not able to resurrect their past glory, and were constantly frustrated in the playoffs by the Montreal Canadiens and their great goalie Ken Dryden.

Year and years continued to pass by.  I went to NYU where there was no hockey team.  Later, I found another all-consuming athletic interest in climbing.  I eventually sold all my goalie equipment save my skates.

Still, my love of the game and the Bruins never died.  It simply went into hibernation.  And now, after 39 years, the Stanley Cup returns to Boston!