Saturday - February 14, 2015

Team Sisyphus

And then I got a call from the nice guy who owns the bowling alley, who is always on the lookout for new bowlers and ways to help out the leagues. “Hey, remember R? You know him from summer league and so on. He wants to get back into bowling, so how about we put him on your team? He’s got a 200+ average, and you guys get along, so what do you say?” A fourth bowler, for us? With a good average? And somebody we already know and like? Hell yeah, bring him aboard!

So the boss man gives us R. And forgets to mention it to his employee M, who not only runs Fun League but pretty much runs the front desk. Not a lady to cross swords with, ever. So the first night R shows up, she’s pissed at us, because we didn’t tell her. Us? What about your boss? Oy. Let’s hope she gets over it. So R shows up, late. But he called! “Hey, my new job, running late, I’m going to miss the first game. Put me down as absent.” Ok. So we write him in, rework the team averages for the handicap calculation, lose all our handicap and give it to our opponents, and then take the 10 pin absentee penalty. And then we get our butts kicked. R shows up for Game 2. “Hey, I haven’t bowled in 2 years, not sure how well I’ll do, I hear this new oil they have really messes with the patterns.” Sure R, do your best. And he rolls 40 under. And we get our butts kicked. Game 3 he almost came up to his average, and we almost won. But we didn’t, so we lost all 7 that week, 0-7.

Next week we get a phone call. “Yeah, I don’t know. This new job looks like it’s going to keep me late every Friday. I won’t be able to make the first game, ever. And I asked, but we’re not allowed to pre-bowl just one game. So put me down as absent for Game 1.” Sure R, work comes first, we understand. Grrr. So we take the absentee penalty, and we lose that one. R shows up for Game 2 and bowls 40 under. We lose. He bowls 15 over in Game 3 and we just barely win, so we go 2-5 for the night. We’re now sinking into 6th place.

Last week ... you guessed it; we get a phone call. “This job man, I tell ya. It’s not fair to you guys, so I’m going to pull out. Maybe I’ll bowl in the summer. Sorry.” He quits. Fine. Ok, let’s replace him on the team list with a vacancy, and maybe we can get some handicap points. “No no no”, says M, cranky as usual, “He should have called in advance. I’ll take him off for next week, but you’ll have to use his absentee score for tonight.” I can’t argue with that. So we do our best, but we’re playing the 2nd place team and they’re running hot, so we get utterly smeared in games 1 & 2. We did our best to rally, and bowled well enough so that we just lost Game 3, thus going 0-7. Again.

Last night, oh look, we’re down to 9th place. But it’s just the 3 of us again, and a vacancy. The boss man stops by, “Gee, sorry about R, I thought he’d work out.” Yeah, we’re sorry too, thanks for trying. And I threw 63 over in Game 1, and we won. And the Mrs threw 52 over in Game 3, and we won. And when we added everything up, we were 12 up in total pins, so we got wood, and went 5-2 for the night.

So we’re going to fight our way back, but the season is more than half over now, so it’s going to be a long uphill struggle. Just like Sisyphus. Nothing like a challenge to keep it interesting, right?

Posted by Drew458     on 02/14/2015 at 11:01 AM   
Filed Under: • Bowling Blogging •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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