The Cliff of Lake George

Last week my Creaker Team Orange, which enjoys good team camaraderie, talked about holding a team barbeque at the end of the season to celebrate our time together.

Then last night, in our weekly zoom, my good friends from back east decided, somewhat in jest, that we should meet for a road trip to stay in the last remaining Howard Johnson's Lodge, which is in the resort town of Lake George in upstate New York (one of the participants lives in nearby Albany, NY).

So my dream combined the two themes. Here it goes:

Team Orange signed up to play in a tournament in Lake George and stayed at Ho Jos. While we were in between games, we walked into a park which overlooked the lake, and we stood atop a very high cliff. Our pitcher, Mark, who in the dream was from Lake George, offered $300 to anyone that would jump into the lake from on top of the cliff; he said it was a local rite of passage growing up in Lake George. He said he would also give out $10 to anyone that would even go into the lake, because it was very cold (this took place in early spring). There was a path down to the lake from where we stood. A couple of my teammates took Mark up on this. There was one player, a woman, who was seriously considering jumping. I tried to talk her out of it. I said, "One small movement in the wrong direction, you could land awkwardly, and break your neck! Not something you want to do at our age!"

We finally talked her out of it, and then Mark declared he was only joking, and would have called her off if she decided to jump. He said no one had ever jumped from that height.

The next day, we played in the finals of the tournament. In the championship game, we took a one run lead in the top of the seventh. In the bottom half, with two outs, the other team had the tying run on third, and the winning run on second. With two and a half strikes (in softball you get one foul ball with two strikes and then on the next foul ball you can strike out), the batter hit a pop fly up the first base line, which bounced and then started behaving oddly (note - in the dream the dimensions were distorted, and the first baseman had no chance to get the ball. And normally I would be playing first but in the dream I was watching this from the third base dugout). The ball rolled foul, and almost stopped and our team started celebrating. But then out of nowhere, it improbably took a sharp right turn into fair territory and the other team commenced whooping it up, because by that time both runners had crossed the plate, having run with two outs on contact, and the batter had gotten to first base safely. Then the ball, not quite stopped, turned left again and started rolling into foul territory again, and the whole celebration started again on our side of the field. For some reason, in the dream you weren't allowed to pick up the ball before it settled in foul territory, which you would in real life. In any event this process repeated itself again and again, with players from both sides crowding around the ball to see what it would do. Finally, after about the third or fourth cycle zigging this way and zagging that, the ball settled down for good in foul ground, and we had our victory. What a bizarre way to win a championship!

That's all there was to the dream, and I am not sure if there are any life lessons from it, but there you have it. Maybe just that we should all visit Ho Jo's on all you can eat clam strip night, and go from there.