Dusty and hot summer at its finest. Baseball team Chillicothe “Barb’s Boys” travels to Rome, IL facing The Roman Gladiators. Baseball players from Rome were, what we were told, military trained kids dressed in baseball attire. They practiced in late March, sometimes in snow. Our coach said that he saw it “verbatim.” Barb’s Boys started practice on the second week of June... a not real good decision. Sometime in late July we arrived at Rome’s “killing field.” 

We only had 9 players and our coach told us to warm up and that we did using a new tactic. It was called the first group hug. After 15 minutes the coach broke it up and instructed us about his hand signals when he stood next to 3rd base. Three signals for our batters. Hand to his nose meant, “Do not cry out to your mother while at the plate!”  Hand to right shoulder meant, “Do not sit down in the batter’s box.”  Hand to left shoulder meant, “Please stick the bat over the plate and hold it there!”  Tough directions but we all obeyed... mostly. As the Enemy took the field and we saw their pitcher warming up, we did another group hug just to fool them into thinking we were scared out of our small minds. 

Rome’s pitcher “Rocket Fuel Randy” had a talent for throwing the ball at close to the speed of light... but he had professional control!  It’s amazing how fast 9 innings can fly by. We spent most of the time watching homers zinging over our heads. Kinda boring for the first 8 innings. 

9th inning and it was our last time to bat. We were down 33 to nothing and had two strikeouts within about 3 minutes. Our coach had a secret weapon and figured it might be time to use it. He called “Lester the Bomber” to pinch hit. Lester was the tallest guy on our team and had four foot arms. Coach said, “bend really low and stay close to the plate.” Lester wept. He cocked the bat and leaned in. He saw a controlled smile on Rocket Fuel’s face and for some unknown reason Lester felt almost strong and powerful. Lester bent his knees and crouched low, really close to the inside edge of the plate. The windup is all any of us remember seeing. The pitcher had a secret weapon, too!  It’s called a heater!  Lester yelled and rolled in the dirt like a run over dog. The heater hit his knee!  We thought he was dead at the plate. Our coach ran to Lester and encouraged him to try to walk with his broken knee to first base and as soon as Lester got on first base our coach jumped up and down and yelled “Holy Cow, we got a ballgame now!” 

No one had touched first base that entire game but Lester. Freddy the Barffer went to the plate and watched 3 perfect strikes zing by him... Freddy was sitting in the batter’s box. Coach gave him some profane signal!  We all scurried back to Chillicothe—some took rides and a few others just ran home about 4 miles and hid under their beds.

A word of caution!  Do not play ball with Rome unless you start practice in January.

Happy New Year!  Hug all the kids and love your neighbor. Practice, Practice, Practice.