Like Fergie, I don't want no drama

So softball has continued to be interesting. After Roz’s jaw was broken (had to be wired shut, which made her lose her job), we had lots fewer team members.

Brian and I had joined the team because a friend from college asked us to. He and I had met while working together over a summer and had become friends through a mutual appreciation of how awesome I am. We moved to Ann Arbor at about the same time as the friend moved back in with his parents in neighboring Ypsi.

We were unaware that the rest of our team members know each other either through this friend of mine (2 other people) or because they have bought from, sold to or smoked with other team members (rest of the team). So while I was excited to be on the “High Life” softball team, it led to the rude realization that no one else is interested in having a Miller after the games.

This is not the source of the drama.

The drama centers around one little sect of our team. This group was headed by Billy and Chase. Other folks in the group who are also team members included Ken, Taylor and Amanda, Billy’s girlfriend. Since our team had a high attrition rate at the beginning of the season (one injured and one scared off), it’s really important that everyone attend and participate. It is also really important that Amanda be on the team, because without her, we will face games where we lose points for having too few girls. So while these 5 aren’t all great at softball, they all are good and are necessary for our team.

But, Billy and Chase are annoying. Chase slept half way through a game, arrived late and almost got us disqualified by adding himself to the roster after the game started. Chase also is loud. So loud that I can hear him heckling from the dugout while I’m in right field. But he doesn’t usually heckle the other team. He just heckles our own players.

Billy is more subtle. Apparently he and Chase objected to the skill level of one of our team members, Scott. Since Scott comes to practice and shows up on time to games, he gets one of the first picks for what position he plays. And even though he knows he’s not great, he wants to have fun and play second base.

Billy and Chad didn’t think he should. And so they heckled him. And pestered our coach to move him from second base. Constantly. Our coach apparently received 40 texts in a single day on the topic.

Our coach had gotten fed up and planned how to deal with this problem. Unfortunately before that happened, Amanda injured her knee badly while batting and left for the hospital with Billy. Now we are permanently down one girl.

In what may have been a poor political choice, our coach decided to call a team meeting. In the team meeting, he specifically called out Billy (absent due to hospital trip) and Chase for their annoying behavior. He cited their constant whining about the way things were run and noted that Chase had threatened to leave the team and take Billy, Amanda, Ken and Taylor with him. This was about the time that Chase freaked out.

There was screaming, cursing and at one point, almost a fist fight. The meeting ended with Chase taking off his jersey and throwing at our coach before stomping off to the parking lot. I would have taken it more seriously if there wasn’t 2 inches of butt crack showing.