No. 692 – Friends

Performer: Joe Satriani

Songwriter: Joe Satriani

Original Release: The Extremist

Year: 1992

Definitive Version: None

When Scott and I planned our Excellent Adventure for 1992, the shift from Torch Lake to Flint on Sunday before going on to Toronto the next day was a genius stroke. I wouldn’t miss any softball games, Scott would get his request to make it to Torch for at least a weekend, and we’d still have a whole week to explore Toronto.

Of course, after I’d been blown off the mound in that softball game, as I mentioned, that took a bit of the sheen off the weekend, but that wasn’t the only problem that we had.

After the debacle in our regular-season finale, the only way to drown our sorrows was for some eating, drinking and backyard sand volleyball at the Cobblestone. All good and well, but what do we do about Scott? He was five months from turning 21, and I didn’t want to have to send him back to my apartment.

The good news was that the Cobblestone, which was on the edge of Grand Blanc, was hit and miss about its carding. Typically, if they were going to hit you up, it was if you got there early by yourself and you were indoors or went up to the bar. If we could just get Scott to the patio, chances are we’d be all right.

Fortunately, Dave had an extra Journal softball uniform, so Scott put that on—good ol’ No. 28. Now he looked like he was part of the team and thus could blend in better with the natural habitat. A bunch of us went in together and went straight for the picnic tables in the back, which was typical anyway.

No one was back there, and Scott and I briefly felt like Billy trying to get on the plane in Midnight Express, but when the waitress came, the only thing she asked for was our drink order and whether we wanted menus. Success! As more people came in and the back started to fill up, we knew it wasn’t going to be a problem after that.

Because it was one of the last games of the year, most of the team showed up, and it didn’t take long for the blemish of the game to be relieved by burgers and pitchers of Labatt’s that flowed copiously.

But beer and burgers can repair a damaged ego only so well. Something else was needed. So a bunch of us took to the volleyball court, and we held it against one team and then another.

After a while, who else would show up, but the hated—and I mean hated (story to come)—Mike’s Upper Deck crew. They had a different sponsor this year, but it was mostly the same folks as in 1991. They had whipped us pretty good on the softball diamond that year, although I don’t recall that it was that particular day.

Anyway, some revenge was in order, and we gave them as thorough a two-game beat-down as you could deliver on a sand volleyball court behind a bar in the middle of Genesee County. The score of the second game was 15-2, and we came close to administering a shutout, which is nigh-impossible in volleyball.

And to top it off, we styled it the whole match as though we were Sinjin Smith and Karch Kiraly giving an exhibition. Hey, what’s the sense in schooling your enemy in township-bar sand volleyball if you can’t rub a little salt in the wound?

Sufficiently sated, both gastronically and now egotistically, Scott and I awoke on a beautiful summer Monday morning and took off to the Great White North.