I’m not usually a fan of getting up early on a Saturday morning. In fact, I’d usually go to great lengths to avoid doing so. But not this weekend. Today I was up (nice and bleary-eyed) at 4:30. Today was Rotblatt.

For those who don’t know, Rotblatt is pretty much the coolest athletic tradition ever. Back in 1967, a group of students decided to celebrate the school’s 100-year anniversary with a softball game. That is, a softball game with one inning for every year the school’s been in existence. It’s still going strong in year 137, though the number of innings actually played is now kind of an approximation. Also, while I don’t know how the original Rotblatt worked, it’s now a very wet event, shall we say.

According to the Carleton Literary Assocation Paper (the CLAP), Marv Rotblatt was “an obscure White Sox pitcher who, in his own words, is ‘more of a beer drinker than a softball player at heart.’” In addition, in its early days Rotblatt actually attended the event several times. In addition, the women’s PE department initially gave credit for participating in Rotblatt. (I am clearly jealous. What is with having to take real PE classes that actually take attendance?) The first game had three kegs. This year’s game had 17. Long story short, Rotblatt is not only an awesome event with an awesome history, it’s the only time that getting up before sunrise and getting drunk will ever be socially acceptable.

So, at quarter to 5 in the morning, a couple of friends and I hauled our tired asses over by the Rec Center, where the festivities were just getting started. There were free t-shirts to be had, and the kegs were just getting tapped. At 5:30, the game began, as we split into red vs. blue. The large number of (poseur) people who were just there for the free shirts started to clear out, and the game began in earnest.

Rotblatt is a kind of managed anarchy. The rules are never quite established or followed, and since no one has any real authority over things, everyone just sort of does whatever. Points are scored in the traditional way, as well as by doing keg stands, and points are lost by talking on cell phones on the field. People usually bat with a beer in one hand. It’s pretty ridiculous, but at the same time, amazingly cool.

I couldn’t stay at Rotblatt all day, however, because I had other places to be. Specifically, I had a meeting with my group for the Cambridge program. Despite the fact that I was quite drunk (the meeting was at 10, and I did a keg stand at 9), I figured I’d just keep quiet and try not to draw attention to myself. That almost worked, except that we didn’t have much to actually meet about, so we quickly went outside for a cookout. Also, we had a bocce tournament, in which everyone had to participate… and I got seeded against my professor. Hopefully he doesn’t think that I’m a horrible drunk. But at least he thinks I suck at bocce.

After the cookout, I’d had a long day, so I had a nice early afternoon nap. It was now 1:00, and I’d been up for almost 9 hours. A couple hours of sleep and a lot of rehydrating took care of me, and I seem to be completing the day with relative normalcy (though I’m still pretty tired).

But it was worth it. I mean, how many times do you get up at 4:30 to drink? Exactly. Besides, I did get this cool t-shirt…

Posted on May 15th, 2004 by Lee
Filed under: Uncategorized