ZIPPER! You cannot make this stuff up.

Last night we finished up our church softball league. Our church doesn't actually have a team, but a few of us play with our friends at Calvary Chapel. As bad as our team has been all year (but still fun), we managed to win our way into the tournament championship game where we were pummeled by the Catholics. I also managed to drop way to many balls as 1st base, but that's not the point of today's entry...

During the first game we played last night (the semi-final) I saw something that goes into the "You cannot make this stuff up" category. The opposing team's pitcher was a fifty-something year-old man with shoulder-length, wavy, salt and pepper hair and a thin, black bandanna around his head . My guess is that this guy was probably referred to as a "hippy" back in the day. He was wearing an old high School football jersey. I suspect that it was his when he was younger. On the back of the jersey was his number and the name (or nickname), "ZIPPER".

First off, let me just say that if your name or even your nickname is, "ZIPPER" that's kind of cool no matter what. I never really had a nickname as a kid or even as an adult, but I always thought it would be neat to have one. Just my luck, I'd be like George Costanza on Seinfeld trying to get people calling me, "T-Bone" and ending up with "Cocoa The Monkey," but I digress.

There was an incredible irony in all of this. Believe it or not, ZIPPER's zipper was down. Someone must have mentioned it to him in between innings because when he came back out later it was fixed, but it's one of those moments I don't want to forget.