Swing, Batter! Suffer, Byron!

One of the most popular XSTREAM Media programs is easily Game of the Week. This in-house production produced by my coworkers and me is nothing more than video footage of a Recreation Department-sanctioned team sport being played in the previous seven days of its broadcast. Sometimes the game is Pickleball, at other times it's basketball. Whatever the sport, I dislike having anything to do with it.

For years, every annual "King of the Hill" sports event at ERDCC was recorded with a single video camera, then broadcast without graphics on the person's closed-circuit TV system – and it was fine. That all changed when one of my coworkers bragged about the last prison he was at, saying in our boss's presence, "Back at Potosi, we used to tape every basketball game." It wasn't a week before the boss bought two $1,200 shoulder-mounted Panasonic video cameras and told us to start producing weekly sports broadcasts. So we do. I designed a logo for XSTREAM Sports that transformed the head of our vaguely menacing octopus logo into a basketball. Then I made a Pickleball version. Then I did one for softball. If they ever allow prisoners to play soccer in Missouri, I'll probably have to make a version for that, too.

If only that's where my responsibility ended. Every Tuesday, because no one else is available, the three members of Team XSTREAM who are too nerdy and/or crowd-averse to play team sports – Ridhwan, Jason, and myself – gear up and head out to the diamond to record another "exciting" round of ball-and-stick. For the record, for those who don't know me or haven't followed this blog long enough to know, videotaping a summer softball game is pretty close to being as un-Byronic as an activity can get. (Attending the performance of a Journey cover band, accompanied by two excitable children, would be one that goes a step further.) I'm basically a human-mushroom hybrid and thrive in cool, dark places. There are three simple reasons why: (1) I don't tolerate heat, (2) I quickly scorch when exposed to direct sunlight, and (3) I don't understand the rules – nor the mass appeal – of sport in general. Nevertheless, there I go, every Tuesday, up onto the volleyball stand, to train a camera over a fence and record two back-to-back games of slow-pitch softball. The camera I run sits just beside the batting cage. The commentators who mike up and feed audio into my camera are a couple of wise-asses intent on roasting every player they can: "His teeth look like he just ate a box of Cheez-Its and didn't brush." "Here comes Charles Manson up to the plate." "Armstrong is a terrible player. Terrible." "His pants are so tight, they're cutting off circulation to his brain." "It's Sammy's birthday today. He's 88 years old and still pitching." And so on. About half the time, I get a headache hearing their yammering through my headphones for two hours at a stretch. It would help if they were at least funny.

Alas, sunburn and a sore neck seem to be my weekly lot in life now. It's a peculiar place to be. We don't have Nielsen ratings, just word on the yard. Like I said, though, the population seems to like it – which is what really matters.