WASHINGTON (AP): Despite initial exuberance following their first win of the season Saturday, members of the Washington City Paper softball team now say they are disappointed with the victory and feel, overall, “less cool.”
“Playing a sport that you don’t take seriously — but other people do — and being bad at it, that’s kind of cool,” explained writer Dave McKenna. “Actually being good at the sport, especially one like softball, it’s like, ‘Ugh. Get a life.’”
Team members had touted their winless record all season long, finding it the perfect opportunity to be both wryly self-deprecating and showcase their disdain for those who value athletics over culture. Staff writers would also post on the newspaper’s blog about their many losses. But there was nothing humorously humble about their coasting to a 14-9 win over Express during the weekend.
“We used to laugh about how we were too hungover to be any good, or that we would have practiced but we went to see the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah show, stuff like that,” staff member Trey Graham said. “We’re really struggling to explain this win to our friends.”
Team members say that while they felt an initial burst of excitement after breaking their losing streak, they’ve noticed a backlash from other City Paper employees as the work week begun.
“On Mondays, Joe [Dempsey] used to love to hear our stories about how bad we were — we’d always laugh about how we were already beat by the slaughter rule before we even got a turn at the plate,” McKenna said. “This morning, I started telling him about how we made a couple key position changes to fill in defensive holes we noticed — he just brushed me off and walked away. Weird.”
City Paper staff members say there is still time to regain some of their lost pride by losing two more games in their last weekend, pointing out that a 1-15 record would still make them the worst in the league.
“Hopefully, The [Washington] Examiner has a bunch of fat guys with knee problems who yell at the ump and stuff,” Graham said. “We need to play our absolute worst if we’re going to gain back the respect of our peers.”
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