We're booted off the magic carpet by the annual Waldwick 5k road race, but Rocco secures us time on the "Old Muddy"at Traphagen. It's 50 and overcast at game time. There's a kids game on the small field and a bunch of Spanish speaking gentlemen milling around with plans to play on the big field. WSS member Juan is one of those guys, and he understands that we have precedence, but we don't have many players. Eventually 8 WSS guys show up, and we negotiate to play with and against the other guys. So 8 of us, including Juan, and three others face off against the red and blue striped shirt team. We're a little worried at first, but these kids are much smaller than us and we can manhandle them, and we score two to their none.
Then the blue team takes the court. These guys are a little bigger, but we hold our own and tie this round 2-2.
More negotiation, it seems the first team wants to play against the second team, but its our field and we want to keep going. The others want to save themselves for a more important game than this gringo scrimage, but eventually they get up a mixed team to play another quarter. We tie again, 1-1.
Now these guys are done with us, and they want the field to mix it up between their own teams. It seems there is some money riding on their game. There is some slightly heated discussion, but we don't have the numbers to keep the field to ourselves, and they don't want to play with us anymore. Eventually we yield the field and call it a day.
All in all it was good fun. The peanut gallery was very impressed by the smooth moves of Mario, and team Old and Slow held their own. 11 v 11 was the best part of the whole thing. Let's get 22 guys to show up next week, and that means you! Same bat time, same bat place.
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