Things can get pretty serious around the office here at Greenpeace, what with the whale killing, forest destruction, corporate polluting and all. How do we unwind? Many of us here have thrown our hearts and souls into the summer softball season. On the national mall at the base of the Washington Monument, we started the season a rag tag group of hippies, (don’t get me wrong, most of us wear shoes most of the time) and finished the regular season with a record of 3-5, two of those wins forfeits. We had a rough start.
Something changed though during the playoffs. Maybe it was momentum gained from a big win for Greenpeace on the Kimberly Clark campaign in early August. Maybe it was the spirit of George Washington touching us all from that great stone obelisk in the shadow of which we play each Wednesday. I suspect that if he weren’t so busy fathering our country, he would have been an avid sports enthusiast. Somehow, against regular season odds, we made it to the championship game of the playoffs. Pitted against Newt Gingrich’s “Newtralizers,” we had no choice but to win. It is hard to accept something like this as a simple physical contest. It was bigger than that for most of us, a manifestation of the ideological odds at which our teams stand. So, from the depths of our do-gooder souls, we mustered all of our might and beat the Newts 17-10 for the National Capitol Softbal Association championship title. Thom Kay’s poignant reaction, “God it feels good to be a gangsta.” Indeed it does, Thom!
