Something that happened a few days ago — more on exactly what that was in a minute — reminded me of something that my son Bob said to his sister Pam a few years ago that I thought was quite comical.
Pam, now 22, had just moved into a rental house that had a fireplace, and she asked if she could have some of the firewood I had cut, split and stored for use in the wood stove of the family home.
“Some, yes, but not a ton,” I said. “There really isn’t all that much extra firewood here.”
Pam sort of started to react in the manner of, “what’s the big deal about a couple of truckloads of firewood, why can’t you just give some to me,” when Bob either joined my defense or more likely just seized an opportunity for humor.
“Pam,” he deadpanned, “firewood doesn’t grow on trees.”
I was reminded of that, as I said, a few days ago as I walked back to the paper after visiting Hasty Freez across the street (we’ve really had some great ice cream cone weather lately, and of course any day is a good day for a King Burger and fries).
Anyway, as I strolled through the DH parking lot, I noticed something hanging from a limb in one of the lot’s trees.
Upon closer inspection, I saw it was a medium-width black leather belt.
That seemed rather odd, but it also seemed like good fortune, because I had been sort of wanting a leather belt to use with my baseball pants rather than a standard, elastic baseball belt, which is a pain to thread through the loops because the size-adjustment buckle always wants to catch on the loops.
So I resolved that if the belt were still hanging there when it was time for me to go home that night, I would just take it.
And it was, and I did.
Of course, it was made for someone whose waist is a bit bigger than my 32-inch variety, but I solved that problem by cutting off some of the excess leather and punching a new hole into the belt.
It made its debut Sunday, with sort of mixed results — two hits and two RBIs, but also two errors, in a losing effort — but I’m going to keep using it anyway.
Speaking of errors, that brings us to today’s installment of Catch of the Day. I bought the glove you are about to see — one my newer ones at roughly 40 years old — at Play it Again Sports in Corvallis maybe a dozen years ago, and I let my longtime teammate Rich Sipe use it for a few seasons because for a time he had no glove of his own. It always worked better for him than it ever will for me; Rich was the best all-around baseball player I’ve ever been around. The guy could simply do everything well, including pitch.
Here’s the glove:
Catch of the Day, No. 4: Rawlings Trap-Eze fielder's glove, Gold Glove Series. The leather patch was a repair job done by a guy at the No-D-Lay shoe store in Albany; I think he charged $4.
