Sunday evening featured a softball doubleheader at Timber-Linn Memorial Park for myself, daughter Pam and the rest of the Democrat-Herald club.
We managed to get swept by a team from the Albany Athletic Club, and individually, the twin bill was kind of a mixed bag for your intrepid blogger, a somewhat reluctant softballer (I love spending the time with Pam, but I’ve just never been that much for slow-pitch).
I managed to go 6 for 7 on the day but didn’t exactly scorch the ball. And defensively, while I recorded six putouts in the nightcap (three apiece at shortstop and left field), in the opener I committed three errors at third base; still trying to figure out how that happened.
Anyway, as you can see it was sort of a feast-or-famine kind of day at the ballpark, which began with half of my stick of of Doublemint breaking off and falling onto the gravel parking lot as I took the gum out of its wrapper.
Momentarily, I was going to just be satisfied with 50 percent of a serving of gum, but when I realized the other half hadn’t fallen into a pile of dog manure or onto a dirty diaper or a discarded syringe, I just plucked it off the gravel and popped it into my mouth.
“You eat a bushel of germs before you die,” my mom would often say as she ate a cookie or cracker or whatever that she had accidentally dropped onto the floor or ground.
I’ve always remembered that and thus am seldom all that bothered about doing the same kind of thing. An exception is for any food item that hits the floor in the DH lunch room, which is adjacent to the press room. The floor was just cleaned and waxed Sunday, so it’s looking pretty spotless right now, but usually it has sort of a SuperFund appearance about it.
For me to eat something that’s hit that particular floor, I either have to be super hungry, or it has to be some particularly treasured food item. You know, something from Hasty Freez, Ciddici’s, the Pepper Tree, etc.
And now our Catch of the Day, No. 47, a mid-1950s Stan Lopata catcher’s mitt made by Rawlings. I picked this mitt up nearly 20 years ago at a junk store in Brookings for around $20. Lopata was a two-time all-star for the Phillies.
