Great news sports fans!  Last night we fulfilled a lifelong dream, playing softball on the National Mall. It started off headed toward a letdown but ended up being a great night. Softball on the Mall is somewhat chaotic. There  are no designated fields, no backstops, no foul lines, nothing that resembles a playing field. Essentially, people throw down bases at the approximate regulation distances and you go from there.

The greatest part is how the fields are assigned. The standard procedure is each team has to send an intern to claim a field in the early afternoon on gameday. Apparently they have to stand on the field until game time. Because the field assignments are imprecise, we had trouble locating our Missouri based teammates. We had never met any of the members of "Show-Me Assess" and didn't even know what color shirts to be looking for (The team is composed of current and former Missouri Democratic staffers, thus the creative team name). We resorted to process of elimination. We walked around nearly half of the Mall looking for anybody with St. Louis, Kansas City or Mizzou gear on. During our search for the team, we ran across another team that needed an extra player, so Ben offered his services (which meant going 2-2 with 2 homeruns including a grandslam) while Kelly continued our search for the "Asses".

Kelly finally located the team at the base of the Washington Monument. Fresh off his victory with the random architecture firm team, Ben came and joined the Asses. The field we played on is considered a bad field because it was kinda on a uphill and included mounds grass on the "infield", just waiting to divert a ground ball into our faces. Regardless of the quality of the field, the scenery was second to none.

We played at the base of the Washington Monument and had a view of the White House in left field, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial toward 1st base and the Lincoln Memorial and WWII memorial past 3rd base. As the sun was setting the memorials became illuminated. Kelly was playing 2nd base and couldn't help staring at good ole' Abe Lincoln all lit up. It was an amazing setting and something both of us have always wanted to do. Also, we won 13-4, which is a vast improvement from the 30-1 loss the team apparently took just a week ago. One could call last week's performance an "ass-kicking", excuse the pun.