Opinion

Follow the ball

Friday, December 18, 2015

I have been slightly home bound lately. I can go somewhere if someone else drives me and will walk with me, but unless it is for medical reasons I hate to ask anyone. That doesn't matter usually because I am so busy with my newspaper work, Facebook, reading, playing Scrabble and maybe just a bit of housework, that I don't have much time for going places. But recently, I think it was a Sunday, I don't always know, I decided to watch television for a while.

I turned to our favorite station. They were covering a tennis match. I played a little tennis in college, but never got very good at it. I tried to remember the rules as I watched... I know one rule that isn't obeyed by the television tennis players. That rule was to play the game with dignity and grace. If I was dismayed at where the ball was coming I ran to meet it and hit it back, but I didn't yell out, or grunt. Women playing tennis were dignified and proper and if we wore shorts that was as much of our body as we revealed.

However the ones I watched that day were actually sisters, which made me wonder if it wouldn't be more fun for them to play with each other, like doubles instead of playing against their own sister. But with grunts and puffs and swirls of their short dresses over panties, I realized. That his wasn't a game for dignified sisters, actually they were so eager to put that ball back to their sister that I wondered why the other one didn't take it instead of just grunting and send it flying back. I caught on that the idea was to send the ball back to sis, but do it in such a way that she can't get it. If she doesn't get it some poor little girl who has been squatting by the tennis court fence runs out to take it and sis pulls another out of her skimpy skirt, or somewhere in that region, and then sends the ball back.

I got tired of that, so I switched channels. Some really big boys were playing football. That ball was much bigger than the ones those girls were trying to smack around. These big boys were sometimes kicking the ball, and sometimes they were throwing it. If someone caught the ball, it depended on what color his clothes were if he ran one way or the other. This made the ones with the other colored costume mad so they ran after him to try to get the ball away from him.

By watching these boys I bet that their mother never received a note from the teacher saying, "Plays well with others." None of them liked the ones they were facing. Sometimes the ball was put down by another big person and all the big boys lined up snarling at each other until someone, somewhere blew a whistle. And then I never could figure out who had the ball and who was happy about that because they all just ran around knocking each other down. Somewhere someone one had the ball cradled in his arms and was running like everything to take it away before he got knocked down. There was a line, something like base in Hide and Seek where if you got to it you could just put the ball down. Then a lot of the people got real happy and some others didn't look like they appreciated what was going on.

Another channel lower down, there were some nice looking men and women playing golf. They didn't have any special clothes on as far as color went, but they all looked real nice. They had a ball also, but it was like a big fluffy marble that they kept hitting with a stick. They sometimes hit that thing like it had done the worst thing possible and the ball went flying down the pretty course.

When the men finally came to the place where the ball had landed they seemed uncertain what to do. Well if it went into a hole they were happy but if it wanted to stay up and play a while more the men got down right in the face of the balls and seemed to be talking to it and everyone in the stands was very quiet. This time the men handled the ball very gently and just urged it to get into that hole. If it did the crowd quit being so quiet and whistled, clapped and yelled things like, "Right on" or "Good Shot" I never did see a scoreboard so I lost track of what they were doing.

Hey, we live in the country and not all channels are good so I tried one more. That showed a bunch of men inside a building huddling over a table with a whole bunch of balls arranged in a pretty triangle. Then some guy gets his long stick and tries to push one of the balls into another ball to get them to both go hide in a hole. They keep that up until there aren't any balls to play with then it looks like one of them is happier than the other.

What did I learn from my afternoon? It doesn't matter what the men or women do. What matters is what happens to the ball. People don't count and they snarl and grunt and hit each other and sometimes they even hit or bat the ball around, but everyone is watching the ball. If the ball goes over a line or into hole it's good for the t ball, but there aren't many times when everyone likes what the ball does. I don't know really.

Maybe it makes a big difference to choose your balls carefully and not spend all your time running around kicking and hitting people or the ball. Just have a cool drink in the shade to forget about that ole ball.

I'm sure glad that baseball season is over.