Hi guys...it's Friday, and we folks near the Gulf Coast are preparing for a rather damp Labor Day long weekend. I've laid in supplies for several days - we're not expecting anything but rain, but people here haven't seen a good soaking storm in so long that they will definitely drive extra crazy when it starts coming down. So I plan to stay home until around Tuesday...
I do wish than TS Lee would slide a little more to our west before coming ashore, and drop some much-needed wetness on Texas. We're pretty dry, but not nearly as dry as the Lone Star State. I can't stand Governor Goodhair, but I have lived and worked in Texas, and dammit, they need some rain!
Now...follow me past the orange challah, please...
Okay - the theme for tonight's festivities... I probably should be more of a baseball fan, because when I was a kid, my dad was the catcher for our community baseball team. The field was in our cow pasture. Dad had built some little bleachers with a chicken-wire screen around them for pop-fly protection, and we had a real home plate and bases - the original "if you build it, they will come." (BTW, I love that movie...)
However...this was a working cow pasture, with real cows. Real cows poop. A lot. So every Saturday morning my job was to get the meadow muffins out of the infield. (You were on your own in the outfield. Please watch where you place your cleats.)
The older, drier poops weren't bad. I just scooped them up with my little spade-thingy and dropped them in a bucket. The fresh ones... well, that was kind of icky. Sometimes my grandpa would get the cows in early on Friday night if we had games on Saturday so the prairie patties would have a little time to get less...succulent.
Then we could play ball! Double-header on Saturday, single game (after church) on Sunday...
Didn't play sports myself as a child. I was a geeky, glasses-wearing kid, and (for us) glasses were expensive. Parental edict forced me to put my glasses on the teacher's desk before going out for recess so my glasses wouldn't get broken. I was extremely nearsighted, and couldn't see a pitch well enough to even come close to hitting it. So I sat out those games. (Ran track in high school, though.)
The Mets...
As an adult I moved to Jackson, MS, where we had a double-A farm club from the NY Mets. That was fun...twi-night doubleheaders, really good hotdogs, beer... Got to see future Mets on their way up, and sometimes already-been-there players on their way down. Up was fun, down was sad.
An "up" was Mookie Wilson, who met a girl in Jackson and got married on home plate at Smith-Wills stadium. He and his new bride walked back to the dugout under the crossed bats of his teammates.
So I've always had a soft spot in my heart (or is that a soft spot in my head?) for the Mets.
The Bandits...
And since I am weird to a fault, at some point I developed a taste for hockey... Jackson had an ECHL team for a couple of years until the transplanted Canadian who brought the team to Jackson...they were (presciently named) the Bandits... was sent to prison. The Canadian? None other than Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom fame.
But when I attended my first Bandits game and I walked through the tunnel of the Coliseum and saw a real hockey rink, with real ice, and guys with French names on their jerseys whacking around real pucks with real hockey sticks... I thought I had died and gone to heaven. By the third game I could sing O Canada in English and French... I even got to ride the Zamboni once!
Damn, I miss my French Canadian/Southern-fried hockey team...
Now...
Still love hockey. Still like football - college and pro. I watch South American soccer and a couple of local college soccer teams. I'll watch Major League Baseball when the LCS starts. Never got much into basketball, either college or pro, but I'll pick a Cinderella team at the beginning of March Madness.
So who's your team? What sports do you like? Did you play as a kid, and do you still play?
Who's your team?
