I'm off to Boston to work the remainder of the convention. Posting is likely going to be sporadic or nonexistent, unless I meet Nomar and persuade him to join the softball team.

Walking across the Gannett lawn to a softball game last week, prior to the ejection, I met a duck. It stood on the grass near the sidewalk and looked away until I came within two or three yards. Then the duck turned and quacked at me. I quacked back. I continued to the field, and the duck waddled in place.

Thursday evening at Gannett Field, as the USAToday.com Sultans of Dot took on the less creatively named News/Money softball team, I finally hit the ball a long way.

I hit the ball the ballyhooed country mile, still inside the park but long enough for me. I'd been strugging all season at the plate, continuing my Little League tradition of doing so but trying harder than ever to stop. The retraining regimen had been grueling — for office softball. Batting cage trips, relearning right-handed hitting, teaching myself a little restraint in the box (stepping, leaning and waiting back in the box), and remembering to watch that big ball all the way through its drop.

So this hit — this hit was sweet spot sweet. My second drive out of the infield all season, deep into right-center, and I was sprinting around first, off the inside of the bag at second and safely into third with the girl on the bag still waving her arms to get the cutoff man's throw. Our lone Sultan runner scored to retake the lead, and I had myself a stand-up triple.

A stand-up, hot to trot, Sam Crawford-loving triple. The hit and condition of verticality accomplished together only by humans of blazing vision and hustle. The kind of bases I needed to turn my season around.

But when I looked up, the ump had my bat in his hands and he was calling me out. Out! The ump yelled that the bat was illegal. He escorted the bat, owned by coworker, into the dugout, and I ran in from third. Heading back onto the field, he pointed at me and barked, "You're ejected! You're disqualified from the game!"

Ejected! Thrown out of a company softball game! The bat was illegal because there was tape at bottom, the ump said. But we've used the bat all season, we argued back. I had already used the bat earlier in the game! But no dice. The ump walked onto the infield and dramatically rung me out, just to make the ejection official.

I took a seat in the wood bleachers, not arguing, because the only thing sillier than being thrown out of a company softball game would have been going Earl Weaver at a company softball game. My RBI went back to the bases and never got back home; the Sultans eventually took the loss. After the game, the ump would come over to explain the bat rule to me. The tape let big guys get another inch of leverage on the ball, he said, but also made the bat more likely to slip out of their hands. And their slippery hands meant my coworker's bat and I were out of luck.

What was the night's average? It was too bad to lose the triple and worse to lose the game, but the ejection taught us all something about a bad bad man with larceny in his heart and ice water in his veins. That man was me, and I liked it.

Because when they outlaw bats, only the outlaws will have bats.

Then the outlaws will give a bat to me, and we'll all be happy.

Related past entries:

-June 10, 2003: The Narrative of The Bat

-June 3, 2002: Playing softball with Catholics and Kevin Arnold

-April 18, 2002: Hearing the first bat of spring

We're talkin' softball. Playin' some too. The work softball team has started up, and we held our first practice today. If I'm remembering right, it was my first such practice since Little League — 10 years ago.

Some observations:

1. I am not in shape. But I knew that.

2. I still can't hit!

3. Kirby Puckett mitt … tarnished.

4. I am further from the ground than I used to be.

5. Or the ground is further from me.