When Tim and I were young. Hey, I finally started a story with other than, “When Tim and I were kids”! When Tim and I were kids, we used to play a lot of baseball. We always played in the yard right by the house. Sometimes an errant ball from the bat would hit the house resulting in our father stomping out and yelling to us, “220 ACRES and you have to play right by the house!” I guess Tim and I were just too lazy to walk any further onto our 220 acres. The main reason, in addition to being lazy, was that the woodshed right behind us perpendicular to the house served as a backstop. This, of course, saved us a lot of walking to retrieve errant balls when one of us missed a pitched ball. When I played Little League baseball in the summer, I always kept very cool no matter how hot it was. The cool air was fanned on me by the swinging bat missing so many pitches when I batted. Tim and I haven’t played baseball or catch since we were kids. This is because our “backstop” is gone now. Since then, the only thing I’ve been catching is “heck”! Of course, the actual word I should have used refers to the “infernal regions”, but the only time I use that word is in Church in a Bible study or somethingJ.

 

Overhead where we always played baseball, there were and are 3 electrical wires that go from the house to the barn. They’ve been there as long as I can remember; in fact, they were very likely installed when our new barn was built back in 1939, to replace our original barn that burned down. They are still there! The insulation is almost all worn off. They are anchored to a big tree a short distance from the east side of the house, and then to a “phone pole” by the driveway. Since there is very little insulation on any of the wires, sometimes they arced against the tree during a windy rainstorm. Someday Tim is planning to replace them. I suppose after 67 years it’s probably getting to the time that they were replaced! In addition to the wires, everything in relation to the barn seems to have lasted the life of it, including the wires, the light bulb in the 2^nd floor of the barn, and the metal roof.

 

It seemed like every time we played baseball by the house and under the wires, when we batted the ball, it would fly up and hit one of the wires! Once and a while we’d use our “Whiffle Ball” rather then a regular hard or softball so we wouldn’t have to chase the ball as far. Even then, it seemed like almost every time we hit it, it also hit one of the wires. Maybe that’s why there’s very little if any insulation left on the wires at that location. Our “Whiffle Ball” (who thought of that name?) was white thick plastic and had holes all through it. We used to call it “The Swiss Cheese Ball”. All the ones I’ve seen these days have slots for the “whiffle” rather than holes.

 

Once and awhile, we DID go out to the driveway. When we did, we used to hit driveway stones with the bat. The stones were very unpredictable as to where they would go. They would fly through the air and went a really long distance most of the time. Sometimes they took a wacky direction. The sound of hitting a rock with the bat resulted in a loud “THONK”!!!  As a result, our bat was full of small dents. On selected occasions, we were also known to hit green peppers, potatoes, and other assorted fruits and vegetables into the air using the bat. Most of the time, though, they disintegrated into small pieces and left “mush” on the bat which we would clean off by sliding the bat in the grass.

 

When we kids weren’t playing actual baseball, we would play a game with a bat and ball at school recess. The game was known as “Flies and Grounders”. One kid would throw up a ball and hit it toward a group of other kids. If one caught a fly, he would be the next to bat.  If none caught a fly ball, then one could bat by catching a certain number of grounders and even “bounders” which were fly balls that first hit the ground and were caught on the way down from the bounce. I don’t recall how many grounders and/or “bounders” it took to be able to bat according to the rules of the day. Sometimes, we allowed “batter’s choice” to establish the ground rules as to how many were required to bat. However, the rules never strayed in that catching a fly ball immediately resulted on getting to bat next. It’s interesting to note that most of the kids would catch high flies with a soft or hard ball with just their bare hands! When I caught a fly ball, which was very rare, I remember how it stung my hands for quite a while afterward. This affected my ability to hit the ball with the bat when I finally got to bat. This usually resulted in the other kids yelling at me for missing the ball so much and they didn’t accept my excuse at having “tingley” hands from catching a hardball fly with my bare hands. NOW IT CAN BE TOLD! I doubt very much that the tingling in my hands in any way affected my lousy batting, but it made a good excuse at the time.

 

When we did play with a baseball (by the house of course), I always used my baseball glove. The glove was unusual because it only had only 3 fingers and a thumb on it just like a cartoon character’s hands. Since it was me, it was no doubt “Goofy”, since I was a ”Goofy” ball player anyway; consequently I played “Goof Ball”. Two of my fingers would go into the middle glove finger and the other 2 in each glove finger on both sides. I bought this glove in Huron with my share of  $20.00 we found one day. This was before the “Urban Renewal” project when they tore down Huron and never rebuilt it!  Another glove we used to use was one we found in the attic. It was a very old catcher’s mitt and was very thick and heavily padded. When the ball would hit the pocket, it would result in a loud “crack” which would sometimes echo off the barn!  I always found both the loud sound and the echo to be very amusing. The pocket of the glove was very small and rounded. The ball had to hit just right and precisely in the pocket, consequently, the ball usually missed the elusive pocket and ricocheted off the thick padding and go in all kinds of unpredictable and erratic patterns. I sure wish we still had that old mitt now since I would really get a kick out hearing the loud “crack” and the echo from the barn again.

 

Well, I could go on with this story, but after writing this much, I’m really “wired”. I’ll “catch” you later…

 

Say, I haven’t had any quizzes lately. Click on the baseball below to take my “Baseball Quiz”!

 

Related story link:

“Stone Wall” Jackson”

“The Miracle Bulb”