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September 23, 2005

Volume 6, Issue 23

Today's theme is "baseball".
ST

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Lefty squinted against the bright night lights toward home plate. It was expected of him to strike out the has-been at bat. Christ!, he thought, this guy is old enough to be my dad! Well, three or four good ones and it's end of game and down to the tavern and that saucy bar-girl he met last night. ONE, yup, blew it right by 'em. TWO, damned, he almost fell over swinging at my heater, he said to himself. THREE, Ok, he got a piece of that one but he's way too slow to hit it fair. FOUR, Oh hell, there it goes, man it's really going up there, Wow, it's gonna hit the lights, Holy Shit!, I thought those things had fuses. Who knew they'd blow up like that. Lousy cheap owners. They can own a baseball team but can't hire a decent electrician.

Posted by: MIKE at September 23, 2005 6:36 AM · Permalink

Naturally.

Posted by: D at September 23, 2005 6:52 AM · Permalink

It was a new challenge but the boys at the Occam’s Moustache Society were up for it. The classics like the prophetic ‘Chariots of the Gods’ all the way through the disturbing ‘Da Vinci Code’ were mere warm-up exercises for this, the greatest quest of all:

The Truth in Baseball!

In retrospect, the signs were so obvious. Three ‘bases’ and then ‘home’, the pitcher’s ‘mound’, a short ‘stop’…

Certainly Abner Doubleday was a lunatic genius. But the boys at OMS were better. There was now no doubt that the fabled Fountain of Perpetual Youth lay deep within the Nebraska Mountains.

Posted by: Jim Parkinson at September 23, 2005 9:44 AM · Permalink

Old Scratch came back to Texas; some folks ain't never learned
Behind him followed eight dead men back to their flesh returned

He said "I've got a team of nine and I've an itch to play"
And BeelzeBud, he smiled, and laughed, and said "What will it pay?"

They settled terms, a bat of gold against nine players' souls
And took the field while Rita howled; the Damned versus the 'Stros.

With one out left, the bases stacked, and the score tied at one,
Proud Satan plunked the batter, sending home the winning run.

There is no joy in Hades...

Posted by: Jeff R. at September 23, 2005 6:02 PM · Permalink

I grew up in Texas, football territory, until age 8, when we moved to Missouri. Football was our religion: High school on Friday, college on Saturday, the Cowboys on Sunday. Baseball was some alien creed, like Catholicism.

We moved to Kansas City when I was 13, and I discovered strange new sports on my radio. It was an epiphany: Like Saul on the road to Damascus, I experienced a sports conversion. It was the mid-1970s; the Royals were on the rise. Ahead lay playoff heartaches at the hands of the hated Yankees, and ultimately a World Series win in 1985.

Posted by: Clyde at September 24, 2005 12:19 AM · Permalink

"What's that they're doing?"

"They're playing a game. It's called baseball."

"Hmmm." His tentacles waved with curiousity. "How does it work?"

"They have two groups called teams. One team waits in that green area. The leader of the team throws a
white sphereoid at a member of the other team, who tries to hit the sphereoid with a piece of cellulose
fiber called a bat. If he's successful, he runs towards those white squares. If the other team gets
the sphereoid to the white square first, the runner is 'out'. Otherwise, he's 'safe.'"

"Huh. And I thought sklortch was weird."

Posted by: cranky-d at September 25, 2005 7:38 PM · Permalink