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My softball team, the Smiling Potatoes of Death, is old. Yes, the team in one form or another has existed for a very long time—one or two of my teammates were on the team in the 1980s, if I'm not mistaken—but what I mean is, our current roster skews "mature." I'd guess our average age is around 52 or so (with outliers at either end of the spectrum), while the rest of the league is generally around 30ish.

Thus, we routinely get pasted.

Our first game this season was a 21-3 loss, which was fairly typical. Our league sadly has a mandatory mercy rule, meaning that if you're behind by 15 runs after, I think, four innings, the game ends, so we usually feel pretty good if we get to play five-plus frames. Last week we lost 12-0, but since we got a full seven innings for the first time in god knows how long it felt like an achievement.

Yesterday, though, the Spuddies actually were smiling when we left the field, because we won a game. It's the third time in the 7-8(?) years I've been with the team that we've been victorious. It's almost like a genuine bigfoot sighting in its rarity.

True, we were playing against a team on the lower end of the talent meter in Bat's Amoré, but a win is a win, especially when you're the league's analogue to the last few years' editions of the Colorado Rockies. More than one of my teammates claimed they would be celebrating the event—and using it as an excuse to slack off on other things—for at least a month.

The world sucks right now. We're contending with an attempted fascist takeover of our Federal government, U.S. Senators are being assaulted and handcuffed by security staff working for a cabinet secretary, our legislature is debating how cruel they want to be in robbing and endangering the public in order to give billionaires more money and build up secret police forces (and that's just today).

So we'll take our joy where we can find it.