Welcome to readers visiting
Help Readers Too from the EXCURSIONS Journey To Health Wiffle Ball Newsletter. I hope you enjoyed reading
Two Boys at the Bat.
Here’s a quick tour of The Flower Garden, the backyard field where the story took place, as well as a challenge for careful readers later in the post.
Here's the view of home plate from the pitcher's mound followed by a close up of the batter's box. There used to be a fire pit where home plate is, but we replaced it with landscaping bricks for the batter's box. (You know ... priorities.) Now we have a portable fire pit, so the bricks serve as both batter's box and a campfire location. The backstop is a bit off center since pretty much everyone who plays here is right handed.
Here's the view from the batter's box down the right field line. Off the back wall of the house or in the landscaping is a triple. On the patio or roof is a home run, but woe to anyone who messes up the DirecTV dish. Too bad we don't have more lefties. It's a short porch wasted.
Now here's the left field line. The home run line is at the bottom of the ditch. The swing set is foul, but the slide is in fair territory and just behind the doubles line which runs behind both trees. Any hit ball that touches either tree is playable, but if it drops it's only a single. The telephone pole, wires, and cables are also in play. Every once in a while a ball will reach the road.
The pitcher's mound is just an eight foot piece of leftover particle board, and I'm open to suggestions for a more aesthetic solution. We don't want anything permanent in the middle of the yard so the landscaping bricks aren't an option ... yet.
Here are three pictures from the patio in right center field. The second and third images show the triples line which runs from the patio around the telephone pole and the home run line in the ditch. The home run line is very deep in dead center field, then runs down the lowest part of the ditch. It's been raining a lot lately, so most of it is under water. Not good for seeing the line, but great fun for outfielders on deep fly balls, sort of like a squishy warning track.
So that's the field, but here are a couple other parts that make it unique. We named the field The Flower Garden in honor of Mom. It originally was going to be called The Brickyard because years ago there used to be a brick factory across the road. We decided on The Flower Garden instead since Mom has some awesome flowers around the house and to honor of moms everywhere who tell their kids, "Stay out of the flower garden!" At least we won't have to.
The ball bucket was decorated by neighborhood kids. We hang it on a shepherd's hook simply because there are flowers like that around the house and we thought it would be funny. The scoreboard is home made. In this picture it shows no outs in the bottom of the seventh with the score 15 to 8. The green clothes pin used to mark the inning is kind of hard to see.
We keep all the bats in a plastic tub along with all the ropes used to line the field. We always used regular bats before this summer. We knew Wiffle Ball bats would be light, but when they arrived we were surprised just how light they really were. We knew that taping them up makes them heavier and more durable, so we decided it we might as well have fun with the taping.
All the kids in the neighborhood have their own bat, and when people from outside the neighborhood come over to play, the kids take great pride when their bat is chosen by someone else. Here's a close-up of a couple bats.
Most of the bats have a color pattern or design of some sort, basically whatever the owner felt like at the time. This Fourth of July bat is the only one intentionally designed around a specific theme.
Thanks again to everyone who stopped by after reading
Two Boys at the Bat in the
EXCURSIONS Journey To Health Wiffle Ball Newsletter. If you have any questions or comments, I'd love to hear them. Leave a comment below or send me an email.
And here's the challenge. Did anyone notice the inconsistency between the poem and the pictures? Leave a comment or send me an email if you think you know, and I'll post what it is - along with picture evidence - sometime in the near future.
Last month I wrote a newspaper column about going outside. Getting the kids from the neighborhood together, running around, making up the rules as you go, faking injuries to trick Dad. You know, playing.
I'm not complaining, so don't get any misconceptions about me being some malcontent coasting through life. Not at all. I just find it funny that the cartoons my kids watch strike me as hilarious. I've liked SpongeBob since I first learned he lived in a pineapple under the sea. I even thought Dora was sort of cool with her type-A personality forcing my children to think everything through in three simple steps. Over the bridge, through the forest, up the mountain! (I wish they'd extend those preschool lessons to elementary school. Unload the backpack, do the homework, repack for tomorrow!)
The auction has been completed, and I'd like to offer a big THANK YOU to the person who found it in their heart this Christmas season to purchase the copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe featuring an autographed letter from C. S. Lewis.
From the "Oh-Do-I-Wish-I-Had-Thought-of-This-First" Department comes the combination - the collision, if you will - of two of the greatest parts of life. As John Madden would say, "Here, see, we got a football game. There's the eleven guys and this big, green field and everything and they're playing football. And then - BOOM! - there's a pigeon and, y'know, that pigeon, he's gonna play football in the National Fooball League."
