Hardware. We’re talking hardware. After playing in the State Employees League since 1986, the MPR co-rec team finally brings home some hardware from the annual postseason tournament, finishing second to a team studded with steroid-popping bionic ringers. (This was the first tournament of the Jesse Ventura administration… hmmm.) Solid defense, timely hitting, a can-do attitude - where have these things been for the past 13 years, the Historian wonders. The big glitzy trophy makes a less-than-stellar regular co-rec season (4-7) a lot easier to look back on. Nothing, however, could make it easier to look back on the men’s team’s 1-9 performance. Picture poor Coach Bentley desperately telephoning every male human being he’s ever met in his life and still not coming up with enough bodies to field a team, and you have a capsule version of the men’s season. Have the men of MPR at long last begun to pay heed to the gentle whisperings of Father Time? You’re getting on in years… If you try to run, you might pull a hamstring… How are the bifocals working out?… There’s no other way to put this: You suck… Perhaps MPR ballplayers were distracted by the Congressional investigation into alleged shady practices involving the team’s mailing list - specifically, a report that the team had sold the names and addresses of previous Wick award winners to the Norm Coleman gubernatorial campaign. Speaking to Ted Koppel on ABC’s Nightline, MPR president Bill Kling said, “I don’t even know what a Wick is,” and “Excuse me, Ted - are you trying to suggest that we have a softball team?” Of course we have a softball team, and we have the hardware to prove it. Speaking of the Wick, there isn’t one this year. It’s a little disappointing, of course, but probably a good sign for the human race in general and softball players in particular. Finally, and most importantly, the Historian is pleased to note: No children were abandoned in taverns during the playing of this season.