by Sebastian Stockman, IQSS July 15, 2007
Bill Horka dove to his left, smacked the wiffle ball up into the air with his left hand and snatched it as he fell to the ground. Cheers came from both teams as Bill - the Ozzie Smith of Core Services - stood up and brushed himself off.
Maybe that was when wiffle-ball fever gripped the IQSS offices. Or perhaps it was when Soner Taskaya knocked a foul ball off Gary King's office window (Our Fearless Leader smiled and waved, we waved back). Whenever it was, the Friday-afternoon affairs have quickly become a fixture on the weekly schedule. (Overheard last week: Core Services Manager Matt Cox to Network Administrator Chris "Gas Can" Perry, "We'll talk about it at wiffle ball.")
It all started the last week in June, when, on behalf of the Dataverse group, Wendy Bossons challenged a few of us in Central Admin. to a softball game. After opting for wiffle ball as a lower-risk option, we commenced a lively week of e-mail trash talk.
When the day came, Central Admin. had to recruit from Core Services, Desktop Support, and even haul in a postdoc and a grad student. The Dataverse group, meanwhile, just showed up. (It makes you wonder if their recent "expansion" is really just a cover for "hiring ringers.")
Central Admin. had the talent, but Dataverse had the luck - and the "relief pitching" of the aforementioned "Gas Can" Perry and Roel Torres, who turned a 9-6 lead into an 11-9 defeat. Nice work, fellas.
Over the last two weeks, the teams have become a little more fluid, and no one has bothered to track the score too closely. Last Friday, however, we did suffer our first wiffle-ball-related injury. Bob Kinney ("Earl Robert the Third" to his friends, or maybe just to me) got crossed up by a nasty pop fly, and went down in a heap. He made it off the field and had to hit the showers (or, uh, beer and pizza) early.
"I'm day-to-day with an ankle," he says.
Check back here early next week to find out if he makes this Friday's game!