Monthly Archives: May 2009

Warning: I tried not to put any spoilers in here about Star Trek or Lost, but if you’re a spoiler stickler, might not want to read this post

This free tip goes out to all the writers of the world: hey guys, time travel doesn’t make your stories better. It makes them suck more. When characters start time traveling, you’re being LAZY. You aren’t smart enough to deal intelligently with all the paradoxes inherent in time travel. Butterflies changing how they flap their wings in 1977 affecting hurricane patterns two years later and all that. The Philosophy 101 paradox about what would happen if you went back in time and killed your grandpa.

That stuff makes plots dumber. It doesn’t make sense, you aren’t smart enough to deal with it, we aren’t smart enough to understand it, and you’re going to end up spending lots of precious air time with obligatory explanations about “destiny” and whether you can/can’t affect things and alternate universes and what happens when you meet yourself anyway?? Pretty soon we the viewer/reader are having to learn complicated sets of rules for your stupid little parallel universe.

It seems like we’re being subjected to the crap over and over. Lost and Star Trek are fun despite the time travel, but I’m sure they’re a lot more fun in the parallel dimension in which J.J. Abrams is interested in, say, entomology instead of time travel.

The Heroes writers botch time-traveling storylines so badly that they ended up basically pretending the second season never existed. The writer’s strike was a big relief for those poor lazy writers.

The one exception I’ll allow is for stories that are actually built around time travel, instead of using it as a plot contrivance. You go into a movie like Terminator or Back to the Future with full knowledge that it won’t address its own paradoxes and absurdities.

And one franchise that made GREAT use of time travel was the Enders series of books by Orson Scott Card. Want to “live” for hundreds of years? Jump in a spaceship traveling the speed of light! (Though you can only jump forward in relativistic time, not backward). Card used this to great effect, and actually delved into the emotional ups and downs of lightspeed travel and leaving loved ones behind in both space and time.

Overall though, adding time travel to a story is really cheating your audience, because what’s the point of getting invested in this imaginary world if everything can change by one character going back in time and doing something differently? If the H-bomb in Lost goes off and undoes everything that happened on the Island–the crash, the relationships, the death, the struggles–what does that say to the viewer? “Guess what, chump? Even in this imaginary world you’ve invested yourself so heavily in, none of that stuff really happened after all. Thanks for watching!”

The sadness you felt when Charlie died, the confusion over The Others and the smoke monster, the anger when Mr. Ecko was killed off–none of it matters, because none of it happened. Ima be pissed if it comes to that.

Anyway, time travel is Plot Killer No. 1. For Plot Killer No. 2, we’ll turn to the old contrivance of characters who can change shape to look like other characters. This has screwed over many a show, from Star Trek to X-Files to Heroes to Lost to X-men to Mission Impossible and on and on and on.

“Anybody could be anybody!” Well, writers, that isn’t especially exciting for us viewers, sorry. You’re basically telling us not to get too involved in what your characters are doing, because their identities are fungible in your stupid little story.

“Wait, why is Agent Scully choking that man to dea…oh, wait, THAT’S NOT SCULLY!” And then there’s the inevitable moment in which the two lookalikes are fighting! only one of them is evil! and the onlooker with the gun doesn’t know who to shoot! Oh, the suspense!

Maybe you lazy writers should stop reverting to cheap tricks to tell your stories. Or maybe I just need to stop watching science fiction stuff.

Our topic for today: Co-ed softball strategies. Seriously, it’s a fascinating game, and one that has much more interesting strategic problems than traditional baseball, the main issue being an enforced scarcity of good gloves and good arms.

The makeup of a corporate team always seems to be about the same. In my company team’s league, a team has to have at least 3 girls on a 9-player squad. If there’s a fourth girl, the team can play 10 in the field. Of those six men, there’s usually:

Two guys who’ve played a lot of baseball/softball. They know how to field, they can throw long distances, and they can sometimes hit the ball where they’re aiming to.

Three guys who are decent players. You can count on them to catch a ball thrown to them, they can make a throw from third base to first, and they can connect with the ball for frequent base hits and occasional doubles and triples. Most of the time they’ll catch a pop fly hit in their direction.

One guy who struggles. He doesn’t throw or catch confidently, and he doesn’t hit the ball with much power.

The girls makeup is generally about the same: a good player, a couple OK players, and one player you need to hide somewhere (but you’d forfeit if she didn’t come, so you’re glad to have her). There is one across-the-board issue with the females though: they generally can’t hit or throw as far. We could talk about differences in average height, wingspan, strength, or center of gravity which give the guys an advantage, but for the purposes of this post, it suffices to say that the game of coed softball is built around evening out the discrepencies as best as possible, but it doesn’t do it completely.

So the Great Question of Coed Softball is: Where do you put all these players to capitalize on the team’s strengths and cover up its weaknesses? Which positions are absolutely critical and which can you fudge a bit?

Obviously, the whole idea of slow-pitch softball is to get a lot of hits and fielder involvement. I’m guessing 90 percent of at-bats put a ball into play. In my league, there are a couple gender rules to a batting lineup as well: the lineup has to go boy-girl-boy-girl, and if you walk a boy batter, the following girl batter can also take a base (to prevent a pitcher from walking all the boy batters).

I’m guessing 60 percent of the batters in an inning (most of the girls and a couple of the guys) won’t get the ball out of the infield. So obviously you need good infielders to pick up the easy outs, right?

But then you’ve got the thirty percent who CAN smash the ball into the outfield, and the 10 percent who can smash it into the outfield and occasionally PICK THE AREA they want to smash it to. Every time a ball goes over a fielder’s head, give every runner an extra base. Every time that fielder then needs to throw to a cut-off man, give every runner still another base, and you’ll almost never throw anyone out using a cut-off man. The best you can do is hope to contain the damage. With good outfielders, long, high hits are outs. With bad outfielders, they’re triples or worse.

So where do you put your best guys and your best girls, and where do you hide your worst guys/girls? You don’t have enough good players to cover the whole field, so which areas can you leave vulnerable? Here are my best guesses as to where to place the best players, in descending order of importance:

Most important position: Pitcher
Yup, just like in regular baseball. There are lots of little dribble hits in softball, which any ol’ pitcher can pick up off the grass. BUT, if a pitcher has quick reflexes and a good brain, he/she can also hide the second baseman to a certain extent (by nabbing line drives and grounders), and cover for a catcher who can’t catch in a close play at home plate. And the best thing about these scenarios is it doesn’t take someone with a lot of arm strength. Whoever’s on the mound needs to have a golden glove and the ability to get the ball across the plate, and if a team has a girl with those qualifications, I’d put her here.

Left Field:
Someone fast who can cover a lot of grass is totally crucial here. Right-handed batters will tend to pull to left field, and a good left fielder can turn a lot of would-be doubles and triples into outs. As a bonus, put a dude here and he’ll have the arm strength to throw out the runner on second who doesn’t know she has to tag up on a pop out. :-) I’d put your best male player in left field.

Shortstop:
Line drives and grounders all day. Gotta be fast, and able to accurately throw to first base. And just like the pitcher covers for the second baseman in fielding, the SS should be covering second base during plays as much as possible. I’d put a strong male here too, only because he’s going to have to frequently make quick throws to first base.

Rover/Shortfielder:
The 10th position, I actually think it’s a crucial one. Get someone who’s smart enough to play to a batter’s pull side, and then the outfielders can play deeper on the power hitters. Rover doesn’t have to have a rocket arm either–good place for your best female (if she isn’t pitching).

First Base:
Basically just needs to be able to catch every crazy, hurried throw, always. Overthrows = automatic extra base for the runner. Fine for a girl or a boy with long arms who can catch confidently.

Center Field:
Same needs as in left field, only in my experience they don’t see quite as much action. But you still need a strong arm, so go with a male here.

Third Base:
Third base won’t see as much action as shortstop, but it’s a longer throw. I’d put a guy here.

Three positions left, and we’re down to the scarcity dilemma. Your three remaining players probably can’t throw or catch very well. I’m guessing there’s one guy and two girls in this group (with the other girls at Rover and either Pitcher or First Base). Here’s where I’m thinking they should go:

Right Field:
Whoever’s the best of the bottom three, put them in Right Field. There won’t be too many hits to right, but every male batter will be aiming there in hopes of getting a big triple or home run off a lousy fielder. I believe this decision might be made for you if your league requires 2 female outfielders (RF + Rover)

Second Base:
The pitcher helps out with fielding grounders and line drives, the shortstop helps out with covering the base during a play, so 2B is a good place to hide a weakspot, right?

Catcher:
Let’s face it, the only time a catcher’s involved in a play is when a runner is being thrown out at home, which doesn’t happen that often in softball. And when it does, a savvy pitcher can step in if need be to make the catch and the tag.

So there’s the safe gameplan (and one that most teams we’ve played have stuck to). What would happen, though, if you stacked either the infield or the outfield at the expense of the other one? I’m guessing it makes more sense to stack the infield. So, what if you built your team around consistently getting most of the girls and half of the guys out on infield plays, aiming to make sure the bases are empty when that one guy per inning steps up to the plate and bashes it out of the park? Would this work? Has anyone tried it? Or do most leagues require 2 women infielders and 2 women outfielders? (This guy says a shift to a five-man infield is illegal under Amateur Softball Association rules, so there must be something to the idea, right?)

Conversely, what about stacking the outfield, similar to a “bend-don’t-break” defense in football? Cede most of the infield singles to the opponent, and just make sure the other team can’t get the Big Hit that clears the bases? They’ll be scoring slowly and one at a time, in long innings, but the power batters will be neutralized, to a certain extent. Any ideas as to what would happen? Is it illegal to have a four-women infield?