An Intro-duck-tion to Dumont Athletics

(Submitted by Car 6, who occasionally delivered things for Dumont)

350 kilometres south of Batoche
Photo by W. Ross Taylor

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The Year we made the Final!

Once upon a time, Dumont Press Graphix sponsored a softball team in the University of Waterloo recreation league. As far as I know, no cash considerations were involved in this sponsorship. This was a second tier competition for non-serious would-be athletes, so we took it very seriously. We pretended not to believe in competition, so our non-existent competitive juices were hidden just barely below the surface. One of us had participated in softball games with children at a summer camp where our friends worked, where all games ended in a heavily manipulated tie score to impress upon the urchins the value of non-competitiveness. With distance, it mostly appears to have been one more excuse to facilitate people hanging out together, which was our favourite thing to do (and perhaps still is).

Our star was an actual Dumont employee, who pitched almost every game and fielded his position like a vacuum cleaner. He could hit a bit too. His significant other was our indefatigable scribe and witnessed more athletic incompetence than was healthy. This always seemed to amuse her. Others were recruited. Once in a non-league pickup event, a psychologist improbably hit a ball about 800 feet. He became the first baseman but never did that again (none of us did). A future PhD was actually a serious fan(atic) of major league professional baseball (many of us were), and it is fair to say we loved to play only slightly more than we loved to fantasize. A couple of Sarnia brothers had hitches in their swings that betrayed early exposure to cricket, quite a different game with quite a different bat. A Venezuelan catcher was found at a daycare centre across a cornfield. As for me, I can only conclude the tall foreheads making such choices decided what this team really needs is another pothead. We were almost all adult-sized boys, although the league was at least theoretically co-ed. Patriarchal tokenism had many names in the early 1970s, and one was rec league sport.

In a high-water mark, we made the championship game one year, although the details of the “championship” at stake are hazy. Surprisingly, our opponents were under the impression we were “the Chevron team” (a bad thing, they believed) and we partially disarmed them by denying any role in the Maoist cult then roiling the campus newspaper. We lost (but it was close) then sipped some beer with this person, the hardworking and underappreciated university employee responsible for endless recreational activities for countless thousands of people over many years:

https://athletics.uwaterloo.ca/honors/waterloo-warriors-hall-of-fame/peter-hopkins/85/kiosk

That’s how I remember it, but I have learned recently that my memory is capable of inventing whole scenes that never happened and completely forgetting others that did.

THE TIME I CAUGHT THE BALL

In the aforementioned season this also happened (see fantasizing above; see suspect memory above).

Parked in left field (where else?), the one excellent thing I ever did in the hundreds of games I played in all sports from early childhood forward unfolded without warning at the crack of the bat (or more accurately, the ping of an aluminum bat).

It was a line drive, very well hit, to a point to my right. Off with the sound, in stride I reached across my body with a gloved left hand, which the ball entered and then stayed as I backhanded it with just the right amount of pressure. I could not believe I had caught it, but I can still conjure the rush.

There were other similar activities. Weirdest of all were the tire-encased swimming pool water polo players but they’ll have to speak for themselves.

Not quite as pictured
Photo by W. Ross Taylor