ZachIsHere

Monday evening turned out to be a lot more exciting than I expected. As I have written before the place I work at has a softball team. I don’t play but it is always fun going out and having fun with my friends outside of work. The staff gets along surprisingly well. I go out and get pictures because…that’s what I do. This past game offered a twist in the form of a huge fight.

Let me set up the scene…

You have a good sized group of people that work in the food industry at a complex that has four huge softball fields with a bar in the middle. They are playing a double header, with the first game at 7:30 and the last game at 9:30. Mix in a competitive sport and a mouthy opponent, and all of this leads up to trouble.

I didn’t arrive until the second game. Everyone was pretty much on their way to “wastedville” by then. Some people that usually are too busy to join in came out and everyone was having a blast. Some of our female players, who are usually terrible, were putting in really good performances. Our second baseman made a really nice play - unexpected for her. She decided to throw her arms up and celebrate before proceeding to spike her glove like a football. One of the most amazing catches I have ever seen happened in right field. One of our girls caught a long fly ball without even looking at it. This grab was so miraculous that multiple people ran in and tackled her in celebration. The only problem was that the catch was only the second out and there were still people on base. But there everyone was, celebrating as if they had just won the Super Bowl.

As the game was unfolding things started getting a bit ugly. The ump just hated our team. His calls were not even in the realm of fair, and judging by the smirks he was throwing our way, he knew it and didn’t care. This got some of our folks fired up. The conversations between the teams started got nasty to the point where one of their players decided to flip us all off as he stepped on home plate. The two teams battled inning after inning and our opponent ended up winning.

Then it began.

Both the teams were slapping hands in the universal time allotted for being a good sport, when one of our hot-headed and inebriated ladies decided it would be a good idea to push one of their girls. This small push didn’t seem bring about the desired level of satisfaction, so she proceeded to run and tackle her. The scuffle begins.

The other girls on our team saw what was happening late and were of the impression that the girl from the other team started everything, so they went bat shit crazy and started wailing on the other team. I will say this for my female coworkers - they are all very sweet, smart and attractive. I also learned Monday evening that they are scrappers. Wow…these little gals must eat thunder and shit lighting because they brought the fury. I was looking on, getting a chuckle out of the whole thing, because at this point it seemed quite harmless. Below is one of the pictures I took showing the scene as peaceful as it ever was. I didn’t get any shots when things really started going down hill. Here you can see the group fighting and people moving in to try and calm down the situation. I really regret I didn’t take more pictures.

Some time passed and cooler heads began to prevail. Three guys kept our friend that started the whole thing from making another run at the other girl and it seemed like everything was going to stop.

Not so.

You have all these people out there and they are a little hot, and then mouths started running again. This led to the ceremonial “walk around and size up” dance that guys like to do when they are being hard asses. Then everything blew up. Out of nowhere, some random guy, in his bid to win “Coward Of The Year,” ran up behind one of our guys and punched him in the back of the head before running off.

At this point, all hell broke loose.

There was nobody I was really pissed at until that happened. I handed my camera to one of my female’s managers, who wouldn’t fight anyone in a million years, and told her to take care of it. This kid was still running, and I shoved him into the waiting arms of two guys I work with. This guy was in a pretty bad position, because the people he just ran into live for this kind of thing. The reckoning came down on this poor guy’s world as our staff just went crazy on him. At this point it was a free for all. The women continued where they left off and any able-bodied man reported for duty on the softball field. I guess it was attracting a lot of attention because people from other fields and the bar started funneling onto the field. There are anywhere from 30-40 people bringing it at this point. A lot of people are trying to create order but it isn’t working. The owner of the place comes through and basically makes things worse by wanting to fight people. He had these guys with him that were starting all kinds of new shit. Finally, enough people came to their senses and things settled down, but the owner and some random dudes kept mouthing off. Our staff voiced their disagreement, and then it looked like there was going to be a round three. This part was funny. There was an opening in a small chain link fence, and for some reason these guys thought it would be really cool to jump over this fence and get in our faces, instead of going through the opening.

“Why are people jumping over fences? There is an opening right there,” I said. A lot of yelling and posturing ensued until everything died down. Obviously everyone was kicked out for the night and we were making sure that nobody walked to their car alone, because there were still a lot of hot-headed people on the prowl. I think the word got out pretty fast that we were the ones who started all this crap, because as we were going through the bar to leave, everyone was looking at us like we were animals in a zoo, hoping they could stare without one of us trying to bite.

A lot of us had to be at work in the next morning and the day was pretty rough and tumble. Amazingly, nobody was seriously hurt. My head is still a little sore and my hands are cut up, but nothing crazy. Below is a sideshow with pictures from the night. It doesn’t take long to see the circumstances that led to the event, but at the end of day we all had a blast. And even though some people have some serious drinking and anger problems these are people that care for each other and would do anything for each other. It shows in the fun pictures and it showed during the bad times. Everyone had a blast. You only live once, right?