March 7, 2001
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So last week I wrote about the softball gods. How sometimes itseems like they're playing games with you, laughing at you, testing you.Well, I think I should have knocked on wood.
It all started Sunday night. At first I thought it was a jokebecause everyone knows that I'm pretty gullible and they try to "get me"all the time.
"Yeah right our flight is canceled," I said. "It's not evenraining here."
"Yeah, but it's pouring in San Francisco," someone said.
"So what does it mean that our flight is canceled? Can't theyjust get us on another flight? Or we could fly into San Jose or Oaklandor something? There's flights like every half hour from Las Vegas."
But they'd already thought of all that.
They'd even tried to charter us a bus.
No, we were stuck. For one night at least, maybe more.
It seemed incomprehensible to me that in this high-techfully-mechanized world that we live in today that there was absolutelyno way to get from Las Vegas to San Francisco in one night but there itwas. No one's fault. Just the weather, a circumstance totally out ofanyone's control.
But still, you wanted to get mad, or to get a betterexplanation at least. Weather. What's that about? It's not likethey've never flown in rain before. Dang softball gods.
After the initial shock though, I fell into a state of quietacceptance. Our whole team did. It was as if we just needed a minuteto digest what was going on, make our peace with the softball gods (orthe weather in this case), and deal with it.
In this case, dealing with it meant having a little fun with ourplight. Playing golf with softballs and bats in the airport. Ridingaround "The Strip" with our fun taxi driver Pete who offered (umm, wedidn't accept) to take us on a guided tour of the city. We even gotvouchers to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe.
It was sort of like our attitude on the field has been thus far."Deal with it. Move on. Find a way to win no matter what the softballgods are doing."
And in the end, we did "win". Monday night around 10 pm I wasback in my dorm room. Only 24 hours later than scheduled. Just alittle bump in the road from the softball gods to keep us on our toes.We had handled it just fine.
But hey, you might as well knock on wood for us just to be safenext time.