RMJ 9 February 23

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 23 ● return to Houston

Sunday morning came nice and easy. I didn’t have to get to the ballpark at 7:30 a.m. Didn’t have to make any decisions. Didn’t have to drink and be sociable. Only had to make an 11 a.m. flight.

As it turned out, the airplane had a mechanical problem. I finally left at 3 p.m. on another plane. I didn’t really mind the delay, because I had the Sunday newspaper. It was the first paper I had read in two weeks, and it was a luxurious interlude.

I had given up reading the paper in Florida. I am a night owl by nature, and I could not fathom rising early enough to read the paper before leaving for the ballpark at 7:15. The first few days, I bought a paper and brought it with me to the ballpark. But I found people at the park wanting to talk about this and that each day, so the unopened paper stared me in the face, flat and unappealing, in the far-past-coffee hours of the late afternoon.

After those few days, I didn’t even try reading the paper; I just tried to catch what I could on television in the evening. It was an uneven compromise to be sure, but it would only last a month. Still, I perused that Sunday paper as if it were the last I would ever see.

 

My original plan was to go to the ballpark when I arrived in Florida, just to see how things went in my absence. But I arrived too late. I tried to call Cubby, and found that I had the wrong number. I called Vern, but he wasn’t home. I called Gerry, and he said things were fine as far as he knew, but he suggested that I call Cubby. Unfortunately, he had the same incorrect number.

Luckily, Cubby called me. After exchanging pleasantries regarding the wedding, we got back to baseball.

“About this ‘stimulated’ game,” he said. “How is it going to work?”

“Well, I thought we would just play one team against the other. Six outs at a time, like I suggested on the workout plan.”

“How are we going to do that with only six players on defense?” he asked.

“I thought we could fill in with coaches or pitchers,” I said.

“I don’t recommend we do that,” he replied in a tone of voice that was very convincing.

I backpedaled a bit, and I made a few suggestions. He offered a few of his own, but it was obvious that we would not come to a meeting of the minds on the phone.

“Why don’t I just meet you at 6:30 tomorrow, and we’ll see what we can come up with?” I suggested. He was amenable, and when I hung up the phone, I started figuring.

If the Rats hit first and we used the Dogs plus three Goats in the field, and continued mixing-and-matching until all four teams had a chance to hit and all the pitchers had a turn on the mound, it could still work.

I drew up an alternate plan and went to bed.