Slow And Smooth

Dave and I love baseball or anything like it. Softball, Little League, beer ball, it doesn't matter. So when we saw a bunch of people on the field at the neighborhood park, we hurried over to watch.

Something about the structure of the game fits my interior life like a ligand on a macromolecule. Or an mRNA sequence on a viral membrane. You get the picture.

[No, we don't.]

Okay, baseball just plain matches up to my insides. I watch baseball and life snaps back into place and everything makes sense again. Don't ask me how. I don't question these things.

Anyway, once we got to the field, it turned out to be a distant cousin to baseball. "My word," I said to Dave, antiquely. "It's adults playing kickball!"

I hadn't seen a kickball game since I was in one. I loved that game. If one kid on the block had one of those big plastic dime store balls, you could play it in the street. You had to work out the baselines according to whose car was parked where. The adults who were assigned to any of us kids liked the game fine, because we were "out from underfoot." Unrelated adults were annoyed. They didn't like seeing all these greasy kids smearing up the fender of their Pontiac rounding third. And if they were actually driving, everyone was annoyed. We kids were annoyed because we were expected to step out of the way so the car could get through. The drivers were annoyed because nobody ever stepped more than three inches further away than they figured the car needed, and then the kids were annoyed all over again because the driver took so long to squeeze through, pounding his steering wheel and using language we weren't supposed to recognize. Then it was back to the game.

But I sucked at it every way you could. No skills at all, couldn't kick, couldn't catch, couldn't throw, couldn't run so's anyone could tell I was running.

My memory sucks too. I remember only the seminal moments of my childhood, in three categories: the humiliations. The triumphs. And the times I got in trouble when I didn't think I deserved to. (This third category is by far the smallest. Mostly, I knew I had it coming.) Kickball once furnished such a moment across two categories at once: triumph followed almost instantaneously by humiliation.

 

I was playing second base. And, in a plot twist, I was playing baseball, for the very first time. I was no more than eight and had never seen anyone play baseball--apparently, our television only got Huntley-Brinkley. But they said it was just like kickball. The batter swung and squeaked a dribbler out past the pitcher and to everyone's shock and amazement I corralled it somehow, and to my shock and amazement the runner on first was just then passing by on the way to second, and holy moly I threw that baseball and thudded it right into the runner's body even though I was fully four feet away from him at the time. I had never gotten anyone out in my life. I was a dang hero!

We've got trees in our parks...

For one second. The runner kept going and made it to third and all my teammates were howling and groaning and waving their arms and I was given to understand that in this game you do not get a runner out by whacking him with the ball, even though that's exactly how you do it in kickball. Presumably, a person could hurt someone throwing a softball at him. I couldn't, but a person could. I'd never successfully either caught or thrown a kickball but I'd certainly had them thrown at me. It was possible to knock me all the way off the base path into the infield and I do believe a number of the bigger boys rather enjoyed seeing how far I would carom, as though it were a game of human marbles.

Anyway, the young adults at the park were indeed playing kickball. I struck up a conversation with one of the spectators on the sidelines. "Wow!" I said, antiquely. "I used to play that when I was a kid!" 

"Huh," she replied, looking me up and down and lofting a thought balloon in which I could clearly be seen in knickers and a jaunty wool cap rolling a hoop down the lane with a stick.

I watched for at least ten minutes. I never saw one player catch a fly ball. I never saw one player throw anyone out. I never saw the other team take the field but they didn't run very well. They all kind of sucked.

They were my people.

There's A Stat For That

Oh boy, it's World Series time again! I'm paying close attention this year because we have a real shot at a new major league stat. We could witness the first non-Dominican to four-hit in two consecutive games while Uranus, Neptune, AND Chiron, which is barely even a planet, are in retrograde, with the Dow above 35,000.

 

Baseball statistics. It's how you can tell a regular enthusiastic fan like myself from a serious fan who is pretty far along on the autism spectrum. The serious fan hoards statistics like a pika hoards hay. Statistics are the difference between Holy crap that big dude really crushed that ball! and Yankee slugger Giancarlo Stanton tied his own record for the hardest-hit baseball in history at 122.2 mph in a game against the Royals in August 2021 and retains the record for the hardest-hit home run at 121.7 mph.

 

We have this statistic courtesy the Statcast system, which has only existed for six years, and yet it is considered safe to assume that no one has ever hit a baseball  harder than Mr. Stanton for all of recorded baseball history. It is safe to assume that because it is demonstrably unsafe to quibble with a 6'6" 245-pound man with a big stick. How big his stick is might conceivably be of interest to a number of fans but that is not the sort of statistic we are now compiling.

The Statcast system employs two cameras to replicate binocular vision and that, apparently, provides death perception to easily distinguish between bodies on the field. Oh wait, that's the Civil War. Statcast provides depth perception.

 

I became aware of this new layer of baseball stats last year when the announcer blithely reeled off the induced vertical break of a particular pitch. Well. That turns out to be a measure of the amount a pitch sinks in relation to where it would have crossed the plate if it just came out straight from the pitcher's hand, taking gravity into account. In inches.

 

The inches and miles-per-hour thing is important because it underscores baseball as being a great American sport and not some sissy metric-ass lollygag-in-the-park.

 

Your serious fan might note that the pitcher had achieved an induced vertical break of over seventeen inches. Your casual but enthusiastic fan would just say he had a wicked curveball. Or something. There are all kinds of pitches. There's a slider, which is actually a sandwich. There's a cutter, which is a ship; a changeup, which will cost extra when you're remodeling, a forkball, which is just plain rude, or an eephus, and nobody knows what the hell that is.

 

Anyway, with this new Statcast system, you get all different stats like the Catch Probability. This is the likelihood a fly ball will be caught based on such things as how far the fielder has to run, how much time he has to get to it, and whether he's in any danger of smacking himself into salsa on the outfield wall. All of this is information readily available to the regular enthusiastic fan using her own eyeballs but now the serious fan can tell you Tampa Bay right fielder Margot Manuel is currently in Outs Above Average based on his cumulative catch probability stats; and somewhere in a dank basement a nerd wearing stretch corduroys and an accountant's shade is working out an ideal roster for the Boss and not watching any baseball at all.

It's getting to where baseball is entering the same territory as that one dang butterfly that causes a hurricane halfway around the world by flapping its wings. Can we quantify how much the weight of the second-baseman's tobacco wad pulls him aside in his initial step toward the ball in play? Stay tuned.

In the meantime, with Statcast, at least we know exactly how it's hanging. They're talking about a fly ball, but it seems promising.

Are You Ready For Some Basebrawl?

It's time for a baseball post. So it might as well be this one.

We were at our local Triple-A ballpark watching the Portland Beavers. Or maybe the Portland Mavericks. It was years ago. We were ahead. Or maybe we weren't. I was distracted.

I don't like to be distracted. You can watch a lot of baseball without actually watching but every now and then something incredible happens and you'd rather not miss it. Dave wasn't missing any of it. We're in the bleachers. And I start to hear something behind me. It was a couple of young dudes, about five rows up. Underage, maybe. But they've been knocking back beer for a while, and they're hollering at our pitcher, who is struggling a little. Basically, they think he's a bum. Specifically, they think he's a stupid fucking nigger. That's the theme. I swivel around and glare hard. It's not a huge crowd but you can tell everybody is appalled. Nobody's doing anything about it, though, and glaring pretty much shoots my entire repertoire of aggressive moves. There are two security people at the top of the section, both of them African-American, but they aren't doing anything either.

By the time I have managed to hone actual daggers out of the vapor between us, and am pretty sure my glare is not survivable, one of them points directly at me and sing-songs "Ooo, lady, are you offended?"

I can't remember if I said anything at that point, but their next move is to yell at Dave, "Ooo, big guy, your girlfriend is offended. What are you going to do?"

Finally Dave notices something. He's not sure what. He hasn't heard any of this but I'm clearly upset and these dudes up in the bleachers seem to be challenging him for some reason. So he stands up and turns around. Seemed like the thing to do, although he's not sure what the next move is.

Dave is a big guy, but nothing like the man one row down who rises up slowly and turns around. He's three hundred pounds of solid don't-even-think-about-it; his own shoulders are a threat to his t-shirt. He had Pipsqueak for breakfast and he's still peckish. He points at the dudes and tells them it's time they sat down and shut up.

They sit down and shut up.

Dave turns back around and asks me what the hell is going on. He's pretty sure, whatever it is, I had something to do with it. I am livid. I'm so pissed off that the dudes wanted to fight Dave instead of me that I'm spitting tacks. Dave does not approve of people my weight class and skill level picking fights and is just about to explain why, when he's hit square in the head with a nearly full beer as the assholes are making their exit.

Dave has the reaction time of an electron. He's' already bolted up the bleachers, grabbed one of the dudes by the shoulders, and spun him around for a little chat, and the dude pushes back. Unfortunately, Dave is not quite squared up and he trips over the bench and tumbles end-over-end back to where he started. It's horrifying, but before we can ascertain if he broke any bones he kips back upright and thunders up the bleachers again. Ten seconds have gone by. And in that time, the entire section has ignited and fifteen people are pummeling the dudes for all they're worth. Dave can't even get a shot in. A very slight bespectacled young man turns toward Dave with a grin for the ages and says "I got him in the kidneys with my binoculars!"

Both security guards continue to stand impassively, chins up, pointedly surveying every section in the stadium but ours, and move just enough to let the young men crawl by them in pulped form on their way out.

Don't know if they learned anything. But there are some lessons to be learned here.

Dave's lesson: Smack the snot out of the guy first and ask questions later.

My lesson: Doesn't matter. I didn't learn it.

Lesson for the rest of you: the kidneys are at the back, up a little higher than you think.

Heavens To Murrgatroyd

I think it can be safely said, now that the Red Sox are in the World Series, that God is involved in sports once again, but it's hard to hold his attention for long. Nevertheless efforts to engage him continue to be made on the playing field.

Gestures change with the times and it's hard to keep up. We're starting to see the end of the double-fist-bump on the heart, which is good, because I'm always worried it signals palpitations. That's a general salutation anyway, not directed toward the Almighty so much as one's fans. But it's nice and short, and the shorter you keep these demonstrations, the less likely the game will be delayed. Experienced practitioners can whip out a sign of the cross between the wind-up and the first pitch. It signifies that the batter is from the Dominican Republic.

You don't see a lot of genuflecting on the field, though. This should be left to catchers, who have springs for knees. Again, it is important to speed up the gesture and not linger overlong with one knee on the ground, lest the player be mistaken for a black man with an opinion, which is something black men are not licensed to have in this country. If you're at all arthritic you shouldn't even try.

We do not have a surfeit of Muslim baseball players and it's just as well. There's no way to speed up the prayerful position, even if it occurs naturally during a slide into second base, inasmuch as the player would then have to ascertain which way is west and point his heinie in that direction. It's a tough call in a domed stadium.

I do think we are achieving the ultimate efficiencies in God-acknowledgment with the current fad of looking skyward while pointing one index finger straight up. The message being sent here is something along the lines of "glory be to God on high," which is certainly how I would feel if I ever landed on first base with a solid hit. (My usual reaction is "holy shit," actually, but that's close.) So far God has not seen fit to install me on base except on a fielder's choice and that's not the kind of thing people like to give God credit for; not disease or hurricanes or dropped pop flies either, although I would imagine he's equally responsible for those.

The specificity of the direction is interesting. For many people, God has an actual address, and it is almost universally assumed, at least by Christians, to be located "up." If a baseball player hits a triple and points somewhere over the horizon, everyone in the stands would turn and look in case there was an incoming asteroid or something. If you think about it, if all the Christians in the world pointed up at the same time, the whole globe would be bristling with fingers going every which way. Which makes sense, if God is indeed everywhere.

For behold, the kingdom of God is within you, or so I recall from my early training, though nobody wants their baseball heroes pointing at themselves even though they made a spectacular play and have worked hard to hone their skills for years and years. It's just not done. But many ascribe to the notion that if God exists, he exists in each of us, and so it might be nice to level a finger at your teammates, especially if one of them just winged you the ball from a rolling horizontal position just exactly where you'd need it to tag the runner. There's no better explanation for a play like that but that God is directing things from the vicinity of that person's chest. Go ahead and point.

As long as he's not a Yankee.

A World Series, And Everyone's Out

We love baseball. Any kind of baseball: major league, park-league, softball, even the kind where short people dribble the ball off a standing tee and charge off to third base to wave at Grandma. All of it. It's the greatest game in the world. And, in as good a sign as I know of that America is headed down the wrong path, no one seems to play it anymore. A casual stroll through any neighborhood here reveals perfectly sound softball fields with nobody on them. Kids can be found playing something close to soccer, and basketball courts usually get some action, but we're  hard pressed to find anything baseball-like to watch. At this point, I'd go to all kinds of trouble just to see a game.

Which we proved the other day.

A tiny notice in the paper said the Gay Softball World Series was taking place all week long right here in Portland, and one of the fields was within walking distance! Huzzah! I inked Tuesday on the calendar.

Tuesday turned out to be the day the ash from the gorge fire was falling on Portland and we had been advised by all media to stay indoors and breathe shallowly, because we are old farts. But we're contrary old farts. When have we ever listened to advice?

Delta Park was only four or five miles that direction (I am waving my finger vaguely northwest), and we zigged and zagged our way through the residential areas with confidence. A gentle breeze scuffed up the ash in the alleyways but we persevered. We're old: we got skills. And nose hair. Then we pulled up at Columbia Boulevard and frowned at the next mile.

One of the things we appreciate about Portland is that we can walk just about anywhere. There are sidewalks and blinky crosswalks and water fountains right there on the street. But suddenly, past Columbia Boulevard, things got real auto-y.

4,000 people at Delta Park and the ladies' rest room was empty.

After slogging on the narrow, trash-strewn shoulder of a loud, fast road, we bailed out onto a little service road and confronted acres of warehouses with cyclone fences. The service road wasn't going the right direction. "Let's bushwhack," I said. Dave looked grim. Bushwhacking wasn't the sort of  thing an urbanite in a pedestrian-friendly city should be expected to do. Plus, he wasn't nearly as confident as I that we'd ever find the field.

"And," he muttered, "I'd put the chances that we will actually find a working softball game today at zero." This is Dave's style. He likes to be pre-disappointed so as to save time later. But he followed me. We skirted several hundred yards of cyclone fence on something like a human deer trail--well-worn, narrow, its side shoots spangled with trash and tent-parts and petering out in the blackberries. Rounded the corner, reconnoitered, checked slant of red sun, dead-reckoned, bent our ears toward any crack of a bat, opted for a winding trail over a slough and behind another cyclone fence, stayed true to instinct, wound through a sea of Dumpsters to a new patch of payment, and lo!

Walmart!

And just beyond, the five pristine softball fields of Delta Park.

"This is great!" I said to the first friendly face. "Are there any women playing today?" My new friend looked wary.

"Well, this is the gay World Series," he said, cautiously.

"I know. But are there women?"

He paused. "Depends on how you look at it," he said.

There were women, as it turned out. Three or four, on just a few teams in the D-division. That's just the way it is. No offense taken. There aren't many women who can compete with grown men, and that's just a fact. The D-division was fun to watch, but relatable. In that they made mistakes. "Run it out, run it out!" I hollered. "Where's the backup, where's the backup?" I hollered. I have no skill at all, but I know how to play, and holler. The Seattle Honey Badgers lost, but they didn't give a shit [you know you want to see it again]. We came back Friday and Saturday.

The smoke was gone. The A-division was tremendous. The beer was outstanding.

And on our way out, we caught the end of the Masters tournament: age fifty gets you in. I've been after Dave for years to join a Masters team, but he won't do it: too sure he'd be disappointed in the skills and strength he's lost. As though the point of a Masters team is to prove you're still twenty.

"Look at that there," I said. "You could totally play on that team. You could star on that team."

He could. Even he could see it. At 66, he could play any position in that field.

And he wouldn't even have to stop to tinkle on the way to home plate.

Sweet Alfred E. Neuman On A Hat!

You've got to hand it to the Cleveland Indians. They've done real well. They were so good they might even have done as well if they'd been called the Cleveland Bowling Pins. It's hard to say, because they're still the Indians. They've still got the dopey Little Injun Boy on their hats and everything. He looks like Little Chief Pee-Pee Pants. He's adorable.

There's talk of replacing the name and mascot, but it's meeting the usual resistance. I saw a thread about it on Facebook and, predictably, someone was cheesed off. "Are you saying calling my team the Indians makes me a racist?" Well, no, not that per se. Other stuff maybe. Maybe you just can't fathom that such a mascot might be seen as insulting, since you don't mean anything by it. Maybe you lack imagination. Someone's messing with your tradition? Okay. Hang onto that aggrieved feeling, because we'll get back to that in a minute.

Let's try a little experiment. Supposed the contending team in this year's World Series is the Mighty Whities. There's a fellow flexing on the cap; he looks like Mr. Clean. How does that make you feel? I see. Yeah, bad example. Mighty Whities is kind of redundant. You're not offended. Dude looks strong. Mighty Whities rule.

Which is kind of why they're hard to mock effectively.

Let's try again. Y'all lost the war. New Mexico is the most powerful nation in the world, and most of you English-speaking white people are clustered in little shabby settlements. Strip malls. Trailer parks. You're doing okay outside of tornado season, and as long as the Waffle House stays open, nobody much complains. Then the World Series rolls around and there they are again: the Pasty-Faces won the pennant. It rankles, because you know you've gotten the short end of the stick in general, and the New Mexicans think you're kind of dirty and you kind of are, what with the meth problem and the fracking spoiling your water, but you still  have a proud European heritage and a right to dignity. Remember that bristly aggrieved feeling when you thought someone was calling you a racist, thinking you're something you're not? It feels like that. You and your people have been a national joke for 160 years. It's like a splinter in your heart every time the Pasty-Faces come up to bat wearing those stupid caps with Alfred E. Neuman on the front. You're being made fun of. You're inconsequential.

So is this another one of those cases of political correctness? We all know that person who is offended by everything. You learn to tread lightly around her, even though you think she's too sensitive and she really needs to get over a lot of that shit--and you're probably right. It's when a whole lot of people have the same complaint that it might be worth considering they have a different but valid perspective. And that their grievance might have more weight than your tradition.

Sure it's a tradition--it's a relic from the days when white men never had call to doubt their dominance over everyone else, including women. The name and mascot are fossil ridicule, embedded in a now-crumbling substrate. But you know? It's not that big a deal, a tradition that's lasted only your whole life, and part of your father's life. That's not that long. You can do better. You'll get over it.

Go Bowling Pins!

How To Score

The thing is, Dave has had plenty of opportunity to kill me, and he hasn't done it. It's one of the things I love about him. And this is a love story.

For the record, this is also my annual baseball story. This is the time of year I start thinking about baseball, and also salted peanuts in the shell. It's a happy time. And I like every form of baseball. Including softball, which I learned how to play in my twenties. Dave went to my games. He always told me I was the best little softball player he'd ever seen who didn't have any actual skills. At all.

I listened.  I paid attention to my coach. I understood where to go and who to back up and how to run the bases smart. This made it very exciting to watch me play. Because I had a good grasp of the fundamentals, there was always the chance I'd be in the right place to knock down the ball and scoop it up, and would know where to throw it, and then there'd be that suspense while the ball loitered in the air on its rainbow trajectory. Would it roll all the way to the base before the runner got there? If she, say, broke her leg or something?

Or suppose I was running the bases. I knew just how far to overshoot second, I kept my eye on the third base coach, I gave it everything I had at the "go" sign. Spectators could track me by the slowly moving dust cloud. Would I make it? Yes! The outfielder threw it home and the lead runner knocked over the catcher! The ball is squirting around in the backstop and no one can find it! And there I am, a minute later, on third!

I don't know why I run so slow. It feels like gravity has a much greater hold on me than it does on other people. I am pounding that ground like a set of sledgehammer pistons but there's not a lot of forwardness.

Of course, I had the benefit of playing in a league--the "P" league, as I recall--far enough behind the elite city leagues that our home field was somewhere in the Oort Cloud. But sometimes we'd get up a coed team at the post office and challenge another station for beer and glory. That's how I ended up playing on the same team as Dave. Dave was good. He wasn't a slugger, but he could crack that ball into the holes in the outfield. He ran bases like an electron. His glove was a vacuum.  And he could knock a honeybee out of the air from ninety feet away.

So there I am playing first base, and Dave is crouched near third, and the batter connects with a screamer that should have just nipped inside the baseline, but Dave is long and tall and quick, and he knocks the ball down. I'm in perfect position for the throw to first. I have my heel on the bag and I'm leaning hard toward third with my mitt out, my face lined up behind it. The runner is bearing down on first. Dave loses the ball in the dust for a few moments and then grabs it and rockets it my way. As he remembers it, he glanced at the base and saw the runner was still a yard off and he could still get him. Instinct kicked in.

As I remember it, an orb was streaking straight for my glove like a freaking meteor, and all I had to do was stand there and we win the game. And when that orb, with its little flaming tail of cosmic dust, was a foot away from my glove, the glove with my face right behind it, instinct kicked in. I called on my old friend Gravity and hit the dirt.

I could hear the ball searing the air over my prostrate form and the cheers from the bleachers as the winning run came in from second base and a startled zzzzup? from a flattened honeybee in the next county and I thought: shit. What's the matter with me? All I had to do was stand there. I am such a goat. This was for a keg, for God's sake.

And oh God, Dave was running toward me. And he picked me up and hugged me hard. "I'm so sorry. I don't know what happened. As soon as I let it go, I thought: I just killed my girlfriend! Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!"

Because Love isn't just for tennis.

The Pre-Wee League

From a distance, squinting, we couldn't tell what we were looking at. March of the biped tortoises? I guessed. Diving bells on parade? Dave ventured. Enormous shells were moving around a field with little legs under them. We moved closer. And Lord love a duck in springtime, it was baseball. It was the Wilshire-Riverside League, the best in post-fetal baseball, and, like every other form of baseball, it was terrific. Call it the Pre-Wee League.

We're skeptical about efforts to rope tiny kids into team sports. It was probably the niece's soccer mudathons that did it. We'd hunker down under tarps on the sidelines and cheer whenever it seemed appropriate, while on the field the kids accreted into scrums with everyone making with little dinky kicks like a single multi-legged organism until the ball squirted out, and after a while one of the kids noticed and ran after it (cheer) and the whole organism reassembled in the new location. There was fresh air and a dab of movement involved, so that's good, but the attempt to introduce structure into their brains was like trying to braid a pitchfork. We both thought they'd have been better off with Duck Duck Goose for another year or so.

But the Wilshire-Riverside League won us over. Kids were happy. Parents were happy. Everyone had a good time and nobody was yelling. And it all had to do with the rules. There weren't any.

Oh, there sort of were, but they were more like suggestions. It was hard to go wrong.

Each child had five pitches to saw at, or eight or nine if the situation called for it, and then the batting tee came out, and the child could whack at it until the ball rolled off. Each team's own adult coach was the pitcher, tasked with trying to make contact with the erratically swinging bat. So everybody hits, or in some other way encourages the ball in a forward direction, and everyone runs the bases. There are three innings. Each inning is over when everyone's had a turn at bat. No runs are scored. Nobody wins or loses.

"Does that bother them?" I asked. Not yet, I'm told.

In theory, a runner can be declared out, if by some coincidence a ball is chased down at a base before the runner manages to get it out of first gear. In that case, it is suggested to the runner that he might want to go back to the bench, but if he gets too involved with the second baseman's bug collection, he can stay put and the other runners work around him.

On this Saturday afternoon, the Georgia-Pacific Girl Power team was facing the Barbers, an all-boy team. G-P wore pink, and the Barbers wore blue. This was helpful for gender identification, because the helmets prevented us from seeing the color of the little bows placed over their soft spots. So let's see how the action plays out:

The Barbers, all five of them, trot out to their designated positions, where the second baseman picks through the grass for bugs, the third baseman consults a passing cloud, the pitcher (who does not pitch) crouches in total safety and total eclipse behind the coach, the shortstop experiments with alternative hat and mitt placement, and the highly alert first baseman hops up and down. Number One in the pink line-up steps up to the vicinity of the plate. Pitching commences. Swing, and a miss. Swing, and a miss.

Miss, and a swing.

The batter is all limbered up for the tee now, and within three whacks has dislodged the ball in the direction of third base, which is so astonishing that everyone pauses to admire it, except the highly alert first baseman, who cannot contain himself from charging all the way to third for the ball before spinning around in confusion as he attempts to field it to himself on first.

Second batter for Pink is tiny. Her chin comes into view under her helmet as she tips her head back to locate home plate, where she squares up like a sentient mushroom. The helmet is enormous. A cloud of bats could fly out of there with no one the wiser. At the first pitch, Tiny trickles the ball into the infield and heads off toward first base at a dead totter, finally going the distance as more and more of the base path comes into view. With both hands on helmet she continues around the bases behind the first runner and both of them fetch up at the same time on home plate in time to watch the ball's triumphant arrival at first base (cheer).

A half hour later Pink takes the field with a minimum of one player per position including outfield where, defensively speaking, their presence is strictly ornamental. They even have enough players to field a catcher, who is armored up with enough safety equipment to tip her over well behind home plate, from which position she assembles a ball collection. An adult wings them back to the pitcher.

It was a terrific game. Everyone had a good time. The team cheers were a triumph of coordination. Both Pink and Blue nailed them.