30 Days of Thankfulness - Day 12. When I started writing this daily post I said I would be expressing my thankfulness for monumentally important things as well as the simple pleasures of life. Today Im thankful for one of those simple pleasures. Im thankful for the invention of baseball. I love baseball. Never could play it worth two cents. Never been able to catch a baseball. Its too small and I have depth perception and klutz issues. But I sure do love to watch it. When I was a kid I prayed one time that when I went to Heaven God would let me be a baseball player. So in the future when youre walking those golden streets and if you happen to see a misfit in cleats and baseball uniform while everyone else is wearing white robes and golden crowns you will know the Lord answered the prayer of a Lee County child. Other sports are okay, but nothing compares with baseball. Maybe its the atmosphere of it all. Sitting in the breeze, relaxing, waiting on something to happen. Its sort of like fishing with a cane pole, at least to this spectator. The biggest celebrity in the area when we were growing up was the great Yankee second baseman, Bobby Richardson. He was a great Christian as well as a great athlete and he was from Sumter. He later preached Mickey Mantles funeral. One of my Dads funniest true stories was about a baseball game that occurred near the Lee County/Kershaw County line in probably the mid- to late 1920s. The boys from the Pisgah community (which was nothing more than a crossroads with a couple of stores) sent word to the boys of Rembert (which was a prosperous little town) they would like to host a baseball game. Rembert was known for having good baseball teams. So the date was set on the calendar and the Pisgah team prepared their baseball field which was simply a cow pasture. The bases were old, brown croker (burlap) sacks. Well, to say the least, neither team was prepared for what they were to encounter. The Pisgah teammates arrived at the pasture stadium riding mules in their overalls. The Rembert teammates arrived in cars wearing matching baseball uniforms. Whats more, the Rembert team actually had real bats, not the homemade contraptions shaped out of old planks or pieces of wood the Pisgah team was used to.. The Pisgah boys were clearly outmatched, both in class and in ability. According to my Dad, the Rembert pitcher was intimidating to say the least. The word on the street was that you would have better luck swinging at a bullet from a .22 rifle than the fastballs that pitcher was hurling. The score was embarrassing and Pisgah had nothing but goose eggs. Finally one Pisgah country boy said in frustration, Well, if you wouldnt throw it so DING hard, maybe somebody could hit it. All this did was instigate the pitcher to mock the batter and make fun of him. In a babyish voice the pitcher answered back, Oh, I didnt you you needed a little EASY ball. The batter wants a little EASY ball. Okay, lets see what weve got here. The pitcher, then, in dramatic fashion, wound up as if he was going to pitch another .22 bullet, but then surprised the batter with a very slow, easy ball that a little child could hit. The batter was so frustrated he swung at it three times before it ever landed in the catchers mitt. The umpire yelled, Youre OUT. The batter protested, What do you mean, Im out? He only threw the ball one time. To that the umpire replied, Yeah, but you swung three times. Youre OUT. Well finally my Uncle Warner came to bat and by some miraculous stroke of luck he accidentally made contact with the ball and got a hit. The Pisgah crowd went wild and yelled as if it was Game 7 of the World Series in a tie ball game. Uncle Warner cleared first base (remember it was a brown croker sack) and the crowd roared RUN. So Uncle Warner was trying to make it to second base with all his might. Only problem was he couldnt see second base. (Remember the ball field was a cow pasture and had tall grass here and there.) He couldnt locate second base and then he saw a brown object that looked like it was approximately the dimensions of a base. (Again, the key words are cow pasture and brown object. ) The crowd roared, SLIDE! Uncle Warner thought they had yelled DIVE, so there goes Uncle Warner head first into what he soon learned to his horror was definitely NOT a brown kroker sack. And as my father would always end the store with great emphasis, AND MY, WHAT A MESS! Enough said about baseball, but Im thankful for Americas pastime on this 12th Day of Thankfulness.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 12:20:20 +0000
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