{"id":2105,"date":"2011-03-10T19:15:14","date_gmt":"2011-03-11T00:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=2105"},"modified":"2011-03-10T19:15:14","modified_gmt":"2011-03-11T00:15:14","slug":"my-pathetic-error-filled-potentially-embarrassing-marvel-comics-softball-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2011\/03\/10\/my-pathetic-error-filled-potentially-embarrassing-marvel-comics-softball-career\/","title":{"rendered":"My pathetic, error-filled, potentially embarrassing Marvel Comics softball career"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As anyone who&#8217;s ever seen me play softball or touch football knows (or should I say, as anyone who&#8217;s ever seen me <em>try<\/em> to play softball or touch football knows), I&#8217;m about the least athletic person on the planet. Which is why I&#8217;m glad that I&#8217;m able to provide evidence that during the summer of &#8217;76, I was able to raise my game from pathetic to merely embarrassing as part of the Marvel Comics softball team.<\/p>\n<p>What position did I play? I was put wherever the rest of the team felt I could do the least damage at any given moment.<\/p>\n<p>As the certificate below proves, I was the team&#8217;s Most Improved Player. But just to show how miserable my performance really was, I&#8217;ll point out that the certificate calls me the Most Improved Player &#8230; <em>for a Boy<\/em>. If not for parsing the categories that finely, I&#8217;m sure that when the time came to hand out the awards at the banquet at the end of the season, I&#8217;d have walked away empty handed.<\/p>\n<p>Because calling any change in my playing abilities an  improvement was an act of kindness. Believe me.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Marvel1976SoftballTeamCertificate.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Marvel1976SoftballTeamCertificate-300x231.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Marvel1976SoftballTeamCertificate\" width=\"300\" height=\"231\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-2106\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Marvel1976SoftballTeamCertificate-300x231.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Marvel1976SoftballTeamCertificate-1024x791.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Marvel1976SoftballTeamCertificate.jpg 1097w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The certificate was designed by &#8230; wait a second. Let&#8217;s make this a quiz. <\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;d like to guess who created these certificates, stop reading now, examine the lettering closely, and think about it for a bit.  Then take your guess, scroll down, and see if you were right.<\/p>\n<p>Are you done cogitating?<\/p>\n<p>Ready to know who&#8217;s responsible?<\/p>\n<p>Are you sure?<\/p>\n<p>Well, then &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230; it&#8217;s &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230; it&#8217;s &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230; Marie Severin, of course!<\/p>\n<p>Did you guess correctly?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As anyone who&#8217;s ever seen me play softball or touch football knows (or should I say, as anyone who&#8217;s ever seen me try to play softball or touch football knows), I&#8217;m about the least athletic person on the planet. Which is why I&#8217;m glad that I&#8217;m able to provide evidence that during the summer of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18,38,20],"class_list":["post-2105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-comics","tag-marie-severin","tag-marvel-comics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}