The league night of 4/16 was our last night of the qualifying season, and we finished banks 7 and 8. This night finally determined who would be in A, who would be in B, and who would play whom in the first round of the final tournament… sort of.
The problem is that Ghostbusters threw a clot near the end of the night, refusing to recognize balls in the left scoop and doing a ball search every time. I ruled catastrophic malfunction and required everyone to play a new game in place of Star Trek. Since I had a quite terrible night and Ghostbuster was one of only two decent games for me, I wasn’t best pleased. Also, unfortunately, Donny had already left before this change was made, meaning that he has to play his makeup before finals. In a strange twist, this will make no difference to Donny’s final position, but could affect two other people’s seed in the bracket.
What won’t change is that Tim is going to be the top seed for the tournament this season. Could this finally be the Season of Tim that some have been predicting for a while now? Tim did manage to qualify for A division at their first Pinball at the Zoo just a few nights later, which was an amazing dark horse showing in a field that included world famous players. Will Tim’s hot hand continue into Lansing finals? We will see soon. (Note: Hot Hand will not be one of the games in finals.) Assuming everyone shows up for A division, that means the top seed of B division will be Devon.
Our Tuesday Night Smackdown was on Elvira’s House of Horrors, and the B division was on Jaws. We had relatively few players this time, so only two people – Joseph and Cyndi – played in B. Despite this, they somehow managed to have a longer game than Bryan, Linda, Ethan, and Tim had on Elvira. When Ethan triumphed, I had to apologize to him for the first that I still do not have my button maker back in working order. He responded by writing an IOU on the score sheet. I said, “I don’t think you get to write an IOU. I think I have to do that.” He said, “No, because it says official signature right here.” I responded, “The funny thing about this official signature… it was never notarized.” I only got three words in before Joseph, still playing Jaws, started giggling. He recognized exactly where I was going because we are both fans of Peanuts and I was quoting (actually slightly misquoting) one of Joseph’s favorite bits from A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.
Season 20’s qualifying is a wrap so that means all we have left is the final battle, tonight at 7 pm! I hope to see you there!