Spring Forward, Springs Past

If Satan the basset hound doesn’t get her second one-mile walk in, our evening tends to be a tad more challenging than we’d like.  Think pawing; jumping on bodies and furniture; running back and forth through the dining and living rooms, that sort of thing.  And Stan was getting antsy because the walk had to wait until after supper.

 

This made it just after seven o’clock.  Leaving through the back yard, I happened to see the boy three houses down.  The kid is very serious about his baseball, same for his dad.  The boy is maybe eighth grade, which means he’ll be missing both graduation and travel ball in the weeks ahead.  That didn’t stop him from setting up a net to hit balls off a tee.

 

Clare didn’t do much of that.  It doesn’t seem to have been as big a thing fifteen years ago as it is now.  She might’ve done it with her hitting coach, and I’m pretty sure she did it in college, but not in the yard by herself.  I guess this helps to develop muscle memory, as Hawk would say.

 

I always preferred throwing batting practice as much as possible, along with regular trips to the batting cages.  As far as I was concerned, the closer to game conditions the better.  A tee is for tee-ball, but then again I’m old school.  Things seemed to work out OK for the hitter God put me in charge of.

 

Satan goes for a twelve block walk, morning and evening.  If there was baseball going on, I’d probably be thinking about it, but right now all we have is owners and players doing some kind of COVID-19 dance.  Assuming both sides can agree on starting a season, fine, I’ll go back to thinking about baseball on our rambles.  Until then, I’ll be content to notice things I never have before, like the number of birdhouses people have out front.  Didn’t everyone get the message?  Tees are for tee ball and birdhouses for the backyard.  But then again, I’m old school.

 

You don’t rush bassets on a walk; it just doesn’t pay.  Try to go too fast, and all of a sudden you’ve got a boulder on a leash.  That means it takes us twenty-five minutes to do our twelve blocks.  The boy was still in his yard, hitting off the tee, when we got back.