How We Got More Than Even With New York Magazine Duke and Carolina never play each other until the final month of the college basketball season. And the Army-Navy game traditionally is the last contest of the college football regular season. So, yes, it seemed a wee unnatural that The New York Times Magazine and New York magazine would meet in the season opener of their media softball league on Monday night. It was pegged as our big rivalry game of the year for reasons I'm not entirely clear about. I guess some of our people used to work there and vice versa. Oh, and they also beat us last year. Anyway, as every good athlete says (and every bad sports reporter quotes): You can only play the games on the schedule. And despite our winter pallors and our stiff rotator cuffs, The Times Magazine was in midseason form in an 20.5-9 victory - a score that was the average between two disparate scorebooks. We are nothing if not democratic. Besides, both sides agreed that having their respective research departments look into the actual score would cause moderate-to-severe deadline issues. There also was some dispute over the game's M.V.P. - some people voting for the captain of The Times, Samantha Henig, for providing the hummus and the pretzel rods on the bench, others voting for the culture editor Adam Sternbergh for his complete-game pitching performance. In the end, the game ball was given to Sternbergh, despite his being Canadian. Among the pretzel-rod-fueled highlights: Christian Cervenano made a Mays-like grab, over his head and on the run, in dead centerfield; our photo editor and co-captain Clinton Cargill knocked a base hit - sandwiched between being hit in the elbow by a pitch and in the shoulder by a throw by the opposing shortstop; and our deputy editor Lauren Kern managed to not bloody herself or any opposing players. The true highlight, however, was the new team jerseys, which came adorned with an original Christoph Niemann illustration, making them easily the most valuable piece of equipment on the field. There were some lowlights, too. Willy Staley played in a gray cardigan and red Vans; our around-the-horn throws resembled something out of a Keystone Cops routine; and the number of brown bags visible in the dugout killed any shot we may have had at being classy. But we'll work on these things. One curious sidelight was an e-mail we received today from the wife of our story editor Jon Kelly, who asked us why her husband came home with a bloody knee. It's curious only because we don't recall him being at the game. So ... her guess is as good as ours. Our next game is May 20 vs. WNYC. Presumably it will be warmer and presumably the swelling in our hamstrings will have subsided.