A beepball axiom: Wait 'til this year

Column

There likely are those who see a pattern in losing 24 straight games in nearly a quarter of a century. They might even question the capability of the coach.

Americans like winners. When you field a team that hasn't won a game in 24 seasons, well, you begin to hear murmurs.

All of that is going to come to a crashing end Saturday morning when I lead my beepball squad to its first-ever win against the Tampa Lighthouse for the Blind at the Yankees' community field in Tampa. The game starts at 10 a.m

Mayor Bob Buckhorn has promised to bring new energy to a team already loaded with weatherpersons, politicians, a food writer and others.

Talk radio host Tedd Webb will make an appearance on the field, along with other first timers: traffic reporter Leslee Lacey from WFLA, and weather guru Juli Marquez from Bay News 9.

Beepball is a game in which you have to hit a beeping ball while blindfolded. In the unlikely event you connect with a pitch, you then have to find the beeping base before blindfolded players in the field find the ball.

For some reason the team from the Lighthouse, led by Lee Kimbrell, has had our number. Through the years, despite close games that include last year's one-run heartbreaker, we've lost them all.

I'm not going to let him know it but this guy Kimbrell is beginning to get on my nerves. I checked the records and he has scored the winning run in 22 games. He sent me an email a couple of weeks ago challenging me to a game of golf.

"You might as well lose to a blind man in golf as well," he wrote. He's not going to suck me into that one. I happen to know he shoots in the 80s and once almost shot his IQ. He's convinced he has our number.

But not this year. Oh, baby, I have stacked the deck. City Councilman Charlie "Senor Beisbol" Miranda is in the lineup. Jeff "Food Mountain" Houck is there as is Channel 8 chief weather guy Steve Jerve, who once actually hit the ball.

New City Councilman Harry Cohen has joined the team. You just look at this guy and the words "athlete" and "legend" come to mind.

It's sort of hard to describe "Bucified Bert," what with the cape and that ship on his head, but he is in our lineup along with Tampa City Councilwoman Mary Mulhern, Trib veteran TV critic Walt Belcher, former traffic reporter Alicia Roberts, Channel 8 weather gal Leigh Spann and Trib editor Bayard "The Man Of" Steele.

If that doesn't do the job, Pinetop Peterson once again has promised to place the creepy "Mojo hand" on home plate when things get tough.

For weeks the pressure has been building for the game that will be played at the Community Field off Dale Mabry, right next to Steinbrenner Field.

I'm sure that the shingles I came down with last week have nothing to do with the stress of the game, but it might force me to manage from a secret location with a bag over my head. Shingles is not a pretty picture.

I hope you can come. There will be raffles and silent auctions along with what promises to be a historic defeat of the mighty Lighthouse for the Blind squad.

sotto@tampatrib.com

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