The Backyard Braves

Tonight’s lineup includes John in right field, Johnelle (sp? — she’s John’s little sister) in left, me on the mound and Shannon at the plate. We’re going to alternate, I tell them: Each batter gets 2 crates of tennis balls’ worth of pitches (approximately 16 chances to hit ’cause we’ve managed to lose a few over the past couple of days), except for me, and I decide I’ll take only one (boi-oi-oi-oing!*).

Shannon smacks a few, mostly grounders and low line drives, though he does send one over the fence. Johnelle struggles at the plate, but she gives it a whirl and proves to be remarkably good at gathering up the tennis balls that have been swung at and missed. John could hit every ball out of the ballpark — er, yard — if he chose to (he is THAT good at hitting; a few years in the local summer league program have been veddy, veddy good** to John ... although, this year he’s given up baseball for tennis).

With Shannon on the mound, I get a couple of hits batting lefty, and then I switch back to my normal right-handed stance, hit a couple more and, on the last pitch, I hit a line drive up the middle that hits Shannon right in the face. I drop the bat; I’m afraid the ball has hit him in the eye!

Fortunately, though, he is holding his nose, instead. He lets me take a look at it: nosebleed! He starts to get a little panicky when he sees a drop of blood (I can relate: I TOTALLY freaked out after my sister busted open her head when Charles Longwell flipped her off the tee-ta-rock!), so I try to stay calm as I lead him inside. He holds his head back and, amazingly, does not shed a drop of blood all the way from the back door to the bathroom.

We get a cold compress and tell him to keep holding it against his nose with his head back. The Lovely heads to the living room and I think Shannon is going to follow her in there to sit down and relax for a few minutes ... but no, Shannon walks right back outside, ready to play some more baseball! What a brave lil’ soldier!

However, his nose is still bleeding, so he and John and Johnelle sit on the bench for a while. The Lovely comes out to inspect Shannon’s nose: still bleeding. She and I decide to call this game for the night.

I ask Shannon if he’s mad at me, and he assures me that he is not. “I got you yesterday!” he says with a smile, referring to the line drive he hit up the middle that nailed me in the left thigh, just above my knee (made a nice-sized bruise, actually).

“Well, sorry I hit you,” I tell him.

“I shoulda ducked!” he replies.

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* — It’s a Larry Bud Melman thang (from Late Night with David Letterman).

** — It’s a Chico Escuela thang (from Saturday Night Live ... though Wikipedia lists Chico’s catch-phrase as “Baseball been berry, berry good to me,” instead of “Baseball been veddy, veddy good to me,” which is how it sounds to me ... though, admittedly, it has been a LONG time since I have seen one of those skits and, quite frankly, I am somewhat surprised I actually even remembered Chico’s name ... though I did, at first, type in Pablo rather than Chico [but I corrected myself before Googling anything!]).

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There is a strawberry patch and random wild strawberries growing throughout our baseball field. These, however, are from The Lovely’s front porch.