Season ¿10?, Game 7: ¡FUTURISMOS! 2 – 2 Legit 2 Quit 1

Karma’s the Proverbial “Bitch”… When She Gets Around to Checking Her Inbox

Children readers, listen up, here’s the Gods’ honest truth about the Golden Rule. What’s painful about it isn’t waiting for other people’s negative actions to catch up with them. It’s that sometimes they don’t. Even often times, I’d hazard. Turning the other cheek is one thing when you know the Gods are watching but another thing altogether if you know the Gods are blind. Oh, and the Gods are blind or at least capricious in their monitoring of human behavior. That is to say sometimes wankers get off scot-free.

This season your ¡FUTURISMOS! are a solid middle of the pack club. Really, that’s where we’ve been save our first couple of horrible seasons and then our magical championship run. Tonight, in the final regular season match, we faced 2 Legit 2 Quit: the top team in the league.

I didn’t know anything about 2L2Q. I’d never heard of them and had no recollection of having played them in the past. ¿How many minutes did it take for me to realize they were substantially better than we were? Mmmmm… less than 1. ¿How many minutes did it take for me to realize they were defined by their best players, all of whom were bona fide wankers? Mmmmm… more like 4.

I don’t mind getting run ragged by people who are simply playing and the outcome is an incidental byproduct of their efforts. What I can’t abide are people who set out to beat you because what they want above all else is to win rather than to play. That’s fine at the World Cup. In a rec league that’s being a wanker. And no one abides a wanker. No one.

So your ¡FUTURISMOS! were playing the best team in the league and they were really good wankers. To give them credit where due 2L2Q were relentless in the best way. No ball went unchallenged. No ¡FUTURISMO! was given time. They applied constant pressure. They surely had more shots on goal by orders or magnitude thanks to beautiful passing and player movement. 2L2Q were really good. And wankers.

Yet thanks to luck, an archetypal scrappy TB goal off an increasingly common Diosa assist, and the return of Elliot as keeper your ¡FUTURISMOS! went into the half with an against-the-run-of-play 1-0 lead.

The first couple of minutes in the second half 2L2Q’s pressure paid off after one of their primary wankers beat a ¡FUTURISMO! and had a clean run at the goal. Elliot stopped his initial shot but the wanker scored off the rebound. At that point I thought we’d be lucky to grimly hold on to the draw.

Again, children, listen up, the thing about the Gods is when they do get around to paying attention there’s nothing they like more than putting wayward humans (wankers) in their places. So, children, do the right thing because the 9 times you get away with it (whatever “it” is) will be dwarfed by the 1 time the Gods catch you at it. Again, children, no one abides a wanker. Not even the Gods.

Midway in the second half Elliot stopped yet another of the endless 2L2Q shots on goal, looked up and played a perfect through ball straight down the middle, running the length of the pitch to TB streaking toward the goal. This is an Elliot specialty. Most of our best goal scoring opportunities come when Elliot—our keeper—has the ball in this hands. No joke. TB latched onto the ball with a clean fast break and scored.

With roughly 10-minutes left your ¡FUTURISMOS! led the best team in the league 2-1.

At this point the bickering and ref sniping was at a fever pitch. Both teams had a player sent off with a card. It was rough going. Both teams had a free kick within the other teams box and failed to score (weird CSC rules… I’d rather they simply award penalty kicks rather than force us to build walls on the goal line to defend free kicks). The Gods were well at work.

2L2Q’s best player fell pray to the crime of hubris by repeatedly attempting to dribble between 2 and 3 ¡FUTURISMOS! to score all by himself. Yes, Leo Messi could to do this. No, this guy could not. 2L2Q turned on themselves. The players on their sideline called for one of the guys to sub out. He didn’t want to and bellowed back at them, “¡Sorry, I’m trying to win here!”

Indeed. Only the truly foolish dare assume they know what it is to “win.” Victory is ultimately bestowed upon mortals by The Fates and 2L2Q’s assumptions had run afoul of their sensibilities.

On the ¡FUTURISMOS! side we swarmed the ball. Everyone was hustling and helping. Bee Keeper straight picked the pocket of 2L2Q #1 Wanker. It was mad defending. Not always pretty but effective. No one wanted to be the one who allowed the goal. Not to these wankers.

When an inferior team beats a superior one the retort is often “if they played 10 times Team Superior would beat Team Inferior 9 times.” Somewhere in the Universe Erwin Schrödinger snickers whenever he hears that because those who say it don’t understand how reality works. When the ¡FUTURISMOS! beat 2L2Q the other nine matches ceased to exist. The wave function collapsed and all that remained was this:

¡FUTURISMOS! 2 – 2 Legit 2 Quit 1.

And so, children, your ¡FUTURIMOS! found themselves in the Gods’ good graces. I won’t presume to assume how long that will last but I will forever relish hearing the ref’s whistle blow thrice while the ball was harmlessly at Elliot’s feet. Sometimes butterflies really do cause hurricanes and at some point 1,000 monkeys at a 1,000 typewriters really will write a great novel.

C’est la vie.

Roll Call
Ladies: Boots, Run MC, Messi & Diosa
Gents: Elliot, Touro, Bee Keeper, King Vidor, TB, Me & El Duque

Postscript
I realize this addition is borderline schadenfreude but I can’t resist.

2 Legit 2 Quit went into our match in first place. Losing to us dropped them into a two-way tie for fourth. Only 4 teams make the playoffs and for reasons I can’t divine {cough, karma, cough} 2L2Q caught the wrong end of the fourth place boot. So we knocked 2 Legit 2 Quit out of the playoffs. Teeheeheeheeheehee…


Post-Postscript
Never mind the Postscript. The league added four more teams to the playoffs and now 2L2Q is in… but so are we. ¿Will we meet in the finals? Ye Gods, I pray not.