Player Profile – #11 – Dave “The Loadstar”

Just as not every kid can win a trophy, so not every player profile can be a glowing endorsement of a player’s abilities. One imagines this is a lesson Dave learned very early in life.

Dave showing characteristically slow reaction to the pitch.

Dave came to the game of Tapey Beercone as a tired, out of shape, middle aged man with a complete lack of athletic ability, but to his credit he was willing to give it a try anyway. During his first foray into the sport, at a mid Season 3 series at The Ranch, Dave would go through the school of hard knocks on his path to learning the game.

On offense, it became immediately apparent that, owning to his poor eye sight and lack of reflexes, he could not be relied upon to make any contact between bat and beercone. Instead, to save himself from striking out at every at bat, Dave took to rarely swinging at all. Forcing opposing pitchers to throw him three legitimate strikes and earning a few walks in the process.

Dave in classic form, refusing to swing at a pitch too high.

On defense, he exhibited infinitesimal range, and could best be utilized simply by being positioned in a place where the batter would most likely hit the ball in the hopes that the beercone would hit Dave directly without him having to move even an inch. As luck would have it this did indeed happen once during his first game when he was struck square in the chest by a well hit line drive by “The Natural”. While Dave may have dropped a more lightly hit ball, “The Natural” hit the ball so well it stuck, leaving a nice mark in the process.

Putting it all together, Dave represented the antithesis of the complete player, and by the end of his first game, a blow out win for the other team, he had earned his nickname: “Deadweight” Dave. But with his shameful moniker came a small silver lining, as he would go down as the catalyst for the sport’s first mid-series trade. Whereby to help improve his team’s chances, manager Eric traded “The Reverend” plus “being forced to drink a twenty year old Guinness Dave had found in the woods” for the rights to “The Natural” for the remainder of the series. This would soon after lead to the creation of the “Dave Doctrine”, a rule forcing clearly uneven teams to be reshuffled between games in a series.

Dave would spend the remainder of Season 3 and all of Season 4 in self-imposed exile, before finally returning to the sport during the 2017 Open Game. Where, once again under the tutelage of manager Eric “The Hammer”, he came through for his team with a clutch two RBI single to push his team into the finals and into 2nd place for the tournament.

Notice the reaction from his manager and the roar of the crowd as “Deadweight” surprises everyone by failing to weight down his team.

Every dog has its day, and even deadweights can learn to fly…

And boy would Dave fly high.

Dave making solid contact for a hit at the 2018 Open.

Following his return from protracted absence at the 2017 Open Game, Dave was found playing the sport more often. He participated in the following year’s 2018 Open Game where his play continued to improve, and again his team took second place in the main tournament. He was even part of his first winning team, when in the day’s first bonus match his team completed a 7 – 0 shutout win. For all of these efforts during Season 5, and for all of his significant, if incremental, improvements as a player, Dave was awarded the Season 5 Mark Hendrix Improvement Award as the season’s most improved player. And with the award came a new moniker, for Dave is now “The Loadstar”, a massive luminary within the Sport, and a guiding light for how to play the game.

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