Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Perfect for a moment - (need to write again)

I've never know anyone that is perfect. If you look at the whole picture and take into account we all make mistakes and do stupid things. There are a few things I'm perfect at: I have never wanted too or tried to kill anyone. There would be other areas of my life that are perfect, the number of these would be much smaller than the number of areas I fall short in. There is perfection in other areas in a lot do different areas -there's the perfect presentation, the perfect dinner or situation. These would all be in the eyes of the beholder. In sports there is the perfect shot or game, this kind of perfection though rear is easy to prove or evaluate. I have never witnessed a perfect game in baseball; this is when a pitcher giving up no hits, walks or errors - no one from the other team reaches base. But I have participated in a no-hitter, which is also very unusual. In golf I have witnessed the perfect shot or a hole-in-one. Let me take that back, I have witnessed the perfect score on a hole, but it wasn't the perfect shot. First let's talk about the no-hitter. It took place my junior year of high school; I was playing first base against our biggest rivals, and a school located eight miles north of us almost twice our size. In the seventies most kids had long hair and believe me, we thought it looked good. Our pitcher that day was our best longhaired hippy impersonator. He was a senior and disliked our opponents as much or more than the rest of us. He was quit vocal at the first of the game as normally is the case when playing your chief revivals. I don't have the box score or remember the play by play, but what I do remember is what started to happened as the game went on. After the first few innings everyone on our team was still excited but we started to avoid our pitcher in hopes of not putting any more pressure on him. The chatter from the other team was a little less directed at us and took the form of trying to support them - almost a plea for each batter to break the curse that was bringing shame upon them. I wasn't to concerned about messing up on a throw to first base, if that happened it would have been an error and we weren't talking about a perfect game "just a no-hitter." Just a no-hitter! I had heard about these but personally had not witnessed one. The longer the game went on the more pressure that seemed to be in the air, it was a home game and those in the stands realized what was going on. The final out was a hard hit liner that was caught just a foot or so off the ground by our shortstop. We never took the championship or for that matter even went to state, but we had witnessed or participated in a once in a lifetime event. It was beautiful to behold. Now the hole-in-one, Now for the one that went in. This was a perfect score but far from a beautiful shot. One summer day a co-worker and I were looking for any excuse to get away from the grind of work. Being commissioned salesmen we could leave the office at anytime to call on customers, if you decided not to work, you didn't get paid. So we decided to go golfing. It wasn't the best day to play hooky as it was overcast and looked like it could rain at anytime. We were only going to play nine holes, which is normal for hackers that had no idea what a handicap even is let alone wanting to find out what ours was. At the farthest location away from the clubhouse we knew we shouldn't be there, the winds were extremely strong and the rain had started to fall. It's probably isn't a good idea to be lifting a metal object into the air in the middle of a torrential downpour. We agreed that we would only play one more hole then back to the cars. It was a par three that was less the a hundred yards long, for the normal golfer this required a pitching wedge to get to the hole. I remember I went first and hit my ball into the air and with the wind being so strong the ball took off to the right of the hole maybe as far away from the pin as I had started. This was crazy, why are we still out here. My co-worker scared to hit the ball as high as I did, took out either a three or five iron; he didn't have a four iron - starter set hardly ever do. He hit a low line drive that hit the ground about thirty yards short of the green but with the wind and how hard he hit the ball it skipped a couple of time and then started to roll. The wind was so strong that the direction of the ball as it rolled on the green was defiantly altered. I had started to walk to my ball when his dropped into the hole. Neither of us could believe it, it had really gone in the hole: the ugliest most amazing shot I have ever seen. We didn't finish the round and for that matter I didn't even finish the hole. When he got to the club house, he proceeded to tell the club pro of his feat, the first thing the man said was which hole were you on and what club did you use. He told him and the man laughed and walked away, not only didn't he believe him but he laughed at him as well. No notice was put in the paper, which is what normally happened, but he had one witness, that I still think he doesn't want to tell the whole story. But he can honestly tell anyone about how he has had a hole-in-one, just making sure he doesn't give to many details.

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