Bombs Away: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Self Promotion

The Beer Garden Sunday fun day has decidedly changed the flow of the Del Drunk week. Productive Monday Del has gone into the witness protection program. Not even his family knows his whereabouts. Seriously, you'd be surprised the impact a few "Dingers" in the sun, coupled with the ubiquitous "Shampoo Effect", will have on your body.

No one is posing here...we can't keep our heads up. Dinger Damage.

This past Sunday's hangover was non existent however because I was a late arriver to Saturday's Beer Garden (creatures of habit). Work was kind enough to help with my fight for sobriety by calling me on Saturday afternoon to do some site testing. Luckily, it mostly required me to sit on my couch and wait for them to call me back. At least this finally gave me the opportunity to watch Snakes on a Plane (awesomely bad btw). Thanks to this I was EASILY the soberest person of our mixed crew for the night. I have to say it was a refreshing change. Even still I managed to somehow let my camera get stashed in a friend's purse. Doesn't sound like much of a big deal I know..but trust me it was. The following day was to be a prolific day in the hallowed halls of 621 Strand. Hmm...scratch the halls part out since it all occurred outside. While everyone else battled nausea and headaches, I was ready to get back on the saddle. We planned one more Beer Garden but the weather sucked so we re-grouped at my house after late breakfast. Someone suggested wiffleball and my eyes lit up.

Let me say a a few things about wiffle ball:

• It's awesome
• Anyone can play
• There's little to no running involved
• You can drink while playing

Sounds great right. On top of that I also happen to be fairly decent at it. I know i know, that's like saying I'm fairly decent at "staying inside the lines in coloring books" or "not biting my fork when I eat" but there is real skill involved. Needless to say we I take it way too seriously. My intensity level is comparable to the white trash kid in middle school who would slide into home plate in gym glass...sans the husky Lee Jeans.

Fact: California is not a big wiffle state. I actually had to fly home to get a suitable wiffle bat and a box of balls...oh and I saw my family too while i was there. Since moving to LA the wiffle games have been few and far between so when the opportunity presents itself I pounce on it like "Jillie" on 4 week old pasta. Sadly, my camera was still in the clutches of a drunk girl so I didn't get to visually document what i like to call:

"The Greatest Display of Power that Santa Monica has Ever Seen"

Yes I own this shirt. Before Sunday it was all mostly exaggerated hubris .

About my exaggerated hubris: I can bring the noise with the wiffle. However a few years of "bringing the noise" and I thought I needed Tommy John surgery. Nothing could be more embarrassing than going to the doctor and explaining to him that you think you have a torn rotator cuff due to wiffle ball. Thanks to the nonexistent wiffle scene in LA, my arm was recharged and I was able to avoid the doctor's inevitable shame face. Wiffle is best as a 3 vs 3 battle but we were down a man early on so we, like the soliders of Sparta, took on overwhelming odds and destroyed the competition. I suppose the 300/Sparta reference is a poor one as they all died but you get the gist assholes: we were down a man. I mixed up the gas face (fastball) along with a biting slide piece (slider) with amazing results (no runs, tons of Ks). I have to chalk the dominance up to my healthy living but then my next sentence will just prove that to be wrong. Beers arrived and we pounded them simply because it was so damn hot. Soon after I CRUSHED a homerun out of the park, into the dog park and over a PALM TREE.

"It's gotta be the beers"

The official measurement was 580 feet. I'm guessing that if it weren't for the top pieces of the Palm tree it the ball would have traveled to Marina Del Rey. I was man among boys. Quite literally because after many an inning a pack of 12-14 year olds asked to challenge us to a game. Feeling punch drunk from the excitement of the bomb, the heat, and the beers we gladly accepted. Now if I were them I wouldn't want someone pitching to me like I was a baby, so I did what seemed natural and gave them the gas face. Poor kids. They didn't stand a chance. The only contact they made was a foul tip fastball... that went screaming back into another kid's face. I think he cried. Soon after that two of the punks gave up and laid on the grass and began texting (each other presumably) while foul in the face boy began to feel the early effects of a a wiffle concussion. The only kid who was actually trying was the kid who appeared to have never thrown a ball before.

He had heart....but not much else.

I was pretty disappointed with these kids. Us "old fuckers", as I'm sure I heard one of them mutter under their breath, had been playing for hours with varying degrees of hangovers ( and were attempting to earn new hangovers as we played) and we had no quit in us. I shit you not, these "young fuckers" gave up in two innings. It was a sad look into the future of our country..and I'm not having it!. I've decided to buy an SUV and use as much Styrofoam as possible. I will fly to New Jersey and find a special lady to be the future Mrs Upton** LeFevre and I'll make sure she uses 3-4 cans of Aqua-net aerosol hairspray a day.

Meet the future Mrs Upton LeFevre: Tiffani from Trenton. She's pretty much the best thing that ever happened to me


Those lazy fucker punk kids aren't gonna Inherit the Earth. Not on my watch! I'm headed to the Hummer dealership right now to trade in my Prius.

Game on!

Side note: After racking up countless Ks and clubbing the majestic bomb, one of the opponents said "You clearly played baseball beyond a high school level". Easily the most awesomely outlandish things said to me in a long long time and I ate it up like it was...wait for it, wait for it.... four week old pasta.


**Recently while reading Entertainment Weekly I decided that if I ever had to change my name I would change it to Upton.
(sticking w/ LeFevre or going w/ Sinclair hasn't been decided yet by future Del/Upton)



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Now playing: M83 - Teen Angst