The First Blade was perfect. Weather, attendance, logistics, softball, bags, food and drink, tribute..damn near flawless. Maybe it took Blade to make folks understand that you can’t make this shit about softball tournaments anymore… it’s about people, the people that have this huge bond that have lost ground to time. The First Blade is the kind of event that maybe you get lucky and your young men and women in the crowd actually can’t wait for their turn to play as we all did. And there really is no greater tribute to the man than to actually have an event where everybody is at…and where everybody is cool.
Props to Swa…I mean damn..that was a lot of moving parts and he’ll say he had a lot of help but that is a grand slam on the First Blade. Toss in Griffin and Gratzi..and some folks that can plan some stuff…beyond well done. The softball/bags mix is perfect. The venue..much thanks and love to my longtime softball teammate Richie B Smart and his wife for creating a great atmosphere. When you got a softball guy, working with softball people, to host a softball event, to honor a softball legend..the results are what you got yesterday.
The tributes and t-shirts ..the sentimentality and straight-up appreciation of everyone that was there is rare. And when you get right down to it..in the history of the game, you can debate the greatness of players..Laba, Johnson, Mario and pick your favorite 4th..but when it comes to answering the question “of all the people in KTown history to play softball, who would be worthy of the type of event that took place Saturday?”. I believe that vote would be unanimous. And a group of people, who at one time were extremely committed to playing softball, came out heavy to throw props to a man that went out with his spikes on.
Need a good reason to stick around for a while?? It is only about 4380 days until The 13th Blade. What a throw-down that will be. #RFR
