I Get By With a Little Plagiarizing From my Friends

I sat down here with nothing in mind to write about.

I suppose it's too much to ask the noise-making entity to rattle some chains, just so I will have a good story. And I certainly don't want that bungee-jumping pregnant spider to drop in with all of her 1,000,000 baby paratroopers springing off as she slams into the Puffs With Aloe box. Nor do I feel like a verbal jousting match with Genius. My old stand-by, Hick, had his turn only yesterday. So that leaves me with the placid Pony, and a bit of inspiration I got from my blog buddy, the Cranky Old Man himself, Joe H.

Let's make one thing clear: my kids are not athletes. Mathletes, yes. But not athletes. We had not quite come to terms with this fact when they were small. Sure, The Pony was not competitive, and preferred a GameBoy to a bat. That didn't stop us from signing him up for the town baseball league. It was not Little League. As Tom Cullen might say, "Laws, no! M-O-O-N. That spells The Pony understands baseball like a fish understands how to repair the bicycle he doesn't need."

Not only were we lax in teaching The Pony the basics of America's favorite pastime, we were lax in signing him up for the summer league. So lax, in fact, that our neighbors, whose son bowled in The Pony's league, called to ask if we wanted him drafted on a team that night at the meeting. We said yes. So clueless were we that we missed the subtle signs that our boy was no Mark-McGwire-in-the-making. Like facing the reality that the neighbor, who knew The Pony, had set him up on the leftover team. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It was made of kids nobody else at the meeting wanted, and designated for the coach who was with his son at the Little League meeting.

The town league had their own field, three diamonds worth, totally on the other side of town from where Little League played. The teams had uniforms, used a ball and bat and gloves, and that's where any resemblance to Little League ended. Score was not kept. Every player batted every inning. That's right. The whole order. If the other team had fourteen players, and your team had ten, then the top four in the order batted twice. Fair is fair. The coach of each team pitched to his own players.

The Pony made quite a name for himself. They tried to hide him in right field, but he faced the back fence and threw blades of grass into the air. Assigned to second base, he shoved every opposing player off the bag. "I'm second base!" he informed the world. We thought he might stay out of trouble at third base. Hick stood along the edge of the field to keep him focused. Until The Pony disappeared when Hick's back was turned. Don't worry. He showed up on first base, scuffling with the regular first baseman. After a round of chastising, he stated, "Nobody ever throws the ball to third. But they ALWAYS throw the ball to first." I'm sure that was a shocking revelation for him. Especially since he liked to run to third on the rare occasion when he made contact with the ball. And not by way of first. The last resort was placing The Pony behind the coach-pitcher. I don't know what that position was called. If the actions of The Pony were any indication, I would say that he played, Coach-Imitating Dirt-Thrower.

His career ended when he came down with a case of Idontwannaplayitis. I'm all for making my kids follow through with what they start. But after two years of this torture, I didn't see the point.

I think they retired his number. In what may or may not have been a fiery, celebratory ceremony.