The hot corner

Driving by a Little League field the other day reminded me of one of the funniest things I ever saw. Managing a league in a remote Alaska town has its own set of difficulties. I remember a guy in Montana complaining about having to go 50 miles to play a game. Our kids went 300 one way for tournaments. Anyway there was another town even more remote. You can only get there by boat or airplane. They started a league and we helped them. They only had enough kids for about one team at each level so had difficulty finding competition. Once a season we would help them come to our town to play a weekend of games at as many levels as they had teams. This involved a six-hour ferry ride each way with 30 or 40 kids. Imagine doing that to play a couple of baseball games. Of course, being a small town, they actively recruited girls or they wouldn’t have had enough players for some teams. So, one summer, in the regular Little League division age 9-12, they had the cutest girl playing third base. Our kids were smitten. The coaches were so frustrated. None of our kids would run past third base. Any excuse they could find to linger there they took. They wouldn’t steal home. They wouldn’t stretch from first to home. For her part she was all business, she was there to play baseball and could have cared less what a bunch of silly boys were doing, She just ignored them. It was hilarious. Finally one kid managed to get stuck on third. He would lead off but he always ran back. The catcher had several passed balls but it didn’t matter. The ball could have gone all the way out into Main Street and that kid would not have stolen home, At one point he led off a little too much. The pitcher threw the ball to third. The kid dove back face first in the dirt, but, he didn’t make it. She tagged him out. And it looked like she might have tagged him a little harder than she needed to. The third base coach threw up his arms. He looked down at the kid laying there in the dust smiling up at him sheepishly, and asked,” Now, how do you feel?”
The kid through dusty teeth and obviously embarrassed said, “I kind of liked it.”