Too Serious

Too Serious

playin' hackey sac

I was working at Frank's bike shop and had recently rekindled my love of playing sports. When I first moved to Oregon (1974) the only sort of athletic activities I was engaging in involved either a frisbee or a hacky sac. I was not that good at frisbee and to say I was not that bad at hacky sac would be a lie. Hacky sac is really the ultimate counter culture game. It's non-competitive, everyone gets a fair chance, and everyone's supportive with no criticism. In fact, I think that last part could be a rule, although rules are not something us “Peace Love Dove” counter-culture types tend to endorse with rules being so bourgeois and all...

In 1976 I started playing pickup basketball with Frank. I had hardly played any sports since the spring of 1968, the end of my Freshman year at Valparaiso. By the fall of '68 I viewed sports and games as empty diversionary activities that ate up too much of my time. There was too much to learn and too much to experience - too much important and serious stuff to pay attention to. Life was serious and time was limited. Well, at least that was my feeling at the time. Spending time on things like sports felt like I was throwing my precious time away. I even cut way back on following baseball, my favorite sport, and stopped paying attention to the World Series. OK, I did get a little caught up with those '69 “Miracle Mets”.

Now the 60's were over. I was no longer taking life so seriously. While I still felt strongly about things like war, civil rights, consumerism, etc. I was no longer feeling compelled to actively participate in movements to change the world. I came to realize that I had virtually no power to change anything anyway. The only place I had any real power to change anything was with me. And, it was the 70's, the time of the “me generation”. I quit subscribing to the intellectual elitist idea that one couldn't be both a worthwhile person and a jock too, not that my athletic prowess would ever cause anyone to accuse me of being a jock. Sure, I had played a lot of sports, but let's just say my skill level was not what I or any of my teammates would have hoped for. I was mostly sort of average. Regardless, I had always loved participating in sports and frankly, I missed doing it. So, I once again allowed myself to readily participated and follow the sports I had largely abandoned back in '68.

I was hanging out with Frank and and we had both participated in lots of sports in our past so we started doing it again. We had already started playing basketball together the previous year and in the summer of 1977 we organized a co-ed softball team sponsored by his bike shop, Willamette Valley Cycle Works. We were part of the counter-culture crowd, so we joined a non-competitive summer softball league largely comprised of teams from co-operatives and other counter-culture inclined businesses and organizations. A non-competitive league with the “Peace Love Dove” crowd sounded perfect. We attended the preseason league meeting with the idea to play just for fun. The initial plan was keeping score would be optional and up to the teams for any individual game. There would be no tracking of team records, no standings, and no league winners. Sounded good but some (not us) wanted to keep records and standings and so a compromise was arrived at. We would play just for fun during the season but at the end of the summer the league would hold an optional year end single elimination tournament. Each team could decide whether or not they wanted to participate. The winner of the tournament would get a toilet seat with something appropriate written on it.

In California - don't got no pics from Eugene

The rules were kind of open and for any one game they could be decided by the teams who were playing each other. In general you were expected to field and bat at least 3 women. You could play with either 9 or 10 players or even less if both sides agreed. Everyone who played in the field had to bat but if you had more players you could bat as many of your players as you wanted. Our team had 4 or 5 women, depending on the week and we played at least four in the field. All the women who wanted to play with us turned out to be pretty good players. The women on our team played Short, 2^nd, Outfield, and Pitcher, so it wasn't like we tried to hide them. There were four of us guys, including Frank and myself, from the bike shop and we were all competent players. Two friends (brothers) who lived down the alley from Frank also join as well as Frank's landlord, Jeff, who was a friend of ours. Those three were all pretty good ball players.

We always left the decision about keeping score to the other team and every game we played the other team chose to keep score. We ended up out scoring the other team in every game we played, often by a lot. We joined the tournament but because a bunch of us had alternative plans on the second day of the games we ended up forfeiting and hence we did not win it.

At the end of the season there was a post-season league meeting. At the meeting we caught a lot of grief, especially from a couple of the teams. We were told we were too serious and were not playing in the spirit of the league. It turned into a lively discussion. Frank asked what we should do differently and the answer seemed to be not win or score so many runs. We attempted to discern just where the problem was after all we were not counting wins and losses. We asked things like: Should we stop batting once we scored a certain number of runs? Were other teams playing differently than us? Yes, we had good players but we didn't play overly aggressive and certainly no more aggressive than most of the other teams including the teams who were unhappy with us. We made a number of suggestions but there seemed to be no appeasing our detractors. There was a generous amount of animosity flowing in our direction. With no suggestions deemed acceptable, it looked like the only resolution was going to be throwing us out of the league or breaking up our team. The discussion went on for awhile and I guess everyone, except maybe Frank and me, felt a little better after venting for a hour. In the end we were graciously allowed to stay in the league with no changes.

So, the next spring when we signed-up for the league again I wanted to change the name of our team to “Too Serious”. My thinking was, heck they already thought we were jerks so why not embrace it and poke some fun at ourselves and maybe this would lighten everybody up. My teammates laughed but voted me down saying that they'd only hate us more. We stayed Willamette Valley Cycle Works and I'm not sure if we won every game the following season as I missed a few of them due to breaking my arm on the basketball court, but we won the season ending tournament, and got ourselves a toilet seat. I suspect there was a bit of discussion about what to write on that toilet seat for us. I didn't dare show up for the league's post-season meeting. I not only didn't show up, I moved out of the state. My advice: “Watch out for that “Peace Love Dove” crowd.”