A big part of our mission at Jason Will Real Estate is to give back to our local community. Unfortunately, given our tremendously busy schedules, giving back can all too often be more easily said than done. Luckily, we have very thoughtful team members, like Adrienne Gill, who suggested that we participate in the 1st Annual “Theme Your Team” wiffleball tournament, also known as the”Turkey Plastic Classic” at Al Trione Park Daphne AL. Proceeds from the event went to support the Southern Spirit Travel Team, a local, non-profit youth sports organization. This turned out to be way more than a fun day of competitive wiffleball for a good cause, as our team, their spouses and our children got to spend some much needed quality time together away from the grind of our busy real estate careers.
A glimpse inside the JWRE Wiffleball Team aka “Red Velvet Pancakes” locker room, would reveal a group of largely over the hill athletes, with little to no wiffleball experience and only one practice session under our belt leading up the big event. In fact, three of our star players indulged in a rambunctious date night at local favorite eatery, California Dreaming, where I am told they may have been over-served adult beverages. That said, we had a strong competitive spirit and love of sport, which would prove to be our secret ingredients to a very unanticipated success story on Saturday, November 22nd.
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Despite an overindulgence of cocktails the night before and the fact that many of our team members have little to know experience handling the slender plastic wiffleball bat, “Red Velvet Pancakes” assembled at the park on time and ready to play. Having no athletic ability, I was charged with the supervision of kids and by the time we made it to the field to show support for our team, they had suffered an embarrassing loss and the outlook appeared grim and our hopes of championship would likely be short lived. So much so, that we all began to look forward to red velvet pancakes at our local IHOP, from which our now infamous nickname for our humble “Cinderella Story” was born.
To everyone’s surprise, we won the next game and the game after that! The desire to settle for fluffy, toxic pancakes soaked in high fructose corn syrup was soon replaced with visions of wiffleball glory. All total, our team won 4 games this fateful day in Daphne, braving high winds, that would intermittently change the direction of a deep fly ball to center field or misdirect an accurately thrown pitch to the homeplate bullseye. If we won game 5, we would earn our way in to the semi-finals and cement ourselves as the team of destiny on that fateful filed of play.
To our dismay we could hardly see over or around the team between us and Turkey Plastic Classic history. They were an older group of disheveled men, yet these were no ordinary couch potatoes. In fact, they had a freakishly tall monk-like character, blatantly adorned head to toe with Alabama Crimson Tide fan gear and sporting a modest “Duck Dynasty” style beard. While somewhat silly in appearance, there was nothing funny about the way this guy crushed that plastic ball. We soon found ourselves in a big hole after the third inning, down 4 runs to none. One of the portlier members of this arrogant brotherhood had the speed of a wounded dear and the hands of an angel. This guy was all over the narrow field making one handed grabs and diving toward the faded turf to secure the next out. His defensive prowess proved to be too much for our batting crew to overcome and double elimination forced us to the sidelines.
It was all just as well, with dark clouds forming overhead, adding a slight chill to that steady breeze and I think our all-stars were grateful to be able to return home and relax from their intense physical display of athleticism and the emotional highs and lows of the battlefield. It was a really fun day and later that evening we all gathered together again to dine on burgers and share war stories form the day. There were hints of what the future holds for JWRE’s Red Velvet Pancakes and even strategic banter on how to ensure that next year would yield an even more glorious result.