Small World

I slept too well last night and don't feel like writing. I didn't wake up 3 times with pets and when I sleep well I wake up groggy.
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I invited some friends up to Hydro Street Brewing for our monthly get together of old softball players last month.

We had a team that played in the #2 league in Madison for a little over 20 years.

We started playing every Saturday at Tenny Park in Madison, just pick up games but there was a core of about 30 guys and a few woman that would play 2 and 3 games every single Saturday there was no snow on the ground for perhaps six years until they tore up the diamonds. Those thirty split into two teams ours being the better and our sponsor was Creative Software who's owner was our 1st basemen, the company wrote all of Weather Centrals software (Weather Central is the worlds largest private weather service).

So we then worked our way up the ladder and along with playing 2 and 3 games on Saturday we played twice a week in league and tournaments. Zero power, a ton of hits and great fielding and frankly, just good smart softball.

Oh, we did have the most on field fights with other teams . . probably the most caustic team in Madison with a large number of bench jockeys . . even our girlfriend fans would have verbal confrontations with the other teams fans . . LOL we had one time when Chris our SS had his arms held back while some guy was punching him in the stomach and I had one pitcher throw OVERHAND a ball at my head once when I was at bat (this was underarm slow pitch). But that is another story.

We were called once a bunch of old yapping Chihuahuas, and then we won the Championship.

But then we started to get older and got married and kids and so forth we called it quits in the middle 90s and slowly drifted apart. Sort of sad.

ANYWAY - a friend I will call . . . Larry was having a brew and a Columbus friend I will call . . . . Doug came up to the table and we talked. Larry and Doug I believe had one of those "I think I know you" moments but did not act on it.

Seems Larry is a truss designer for houses and Doug knows a thing or two about wood and a few weeks later they are in some big company meeting and BAM. They have a common link! ME!!!

Small world.

That reminded me of an adventure I had a number of years ago. A friend and I went on a baseball vacation. Two weeks on the road to see 10 Major League Stadiums. As we jumped into the loaded car for two weeks of camping the last thing Chris said was "We need toilet paper" and he ran to the house and got a roll.

Anyway the vacation was a success except for Chris opening the car door on a biker, and I think we stole some salt from a McDonalds once. . . HEY, when you ask for ketchup they give you like 20 packs! I think they can handle missing a salt shaker.

We got rained out in Detroit and could have had a double header the next night AND we could have seen Crosby Still, Nash and Young for free but, we had TWO games in TWO other cities the next day and night. sigh.

The odd thing was we were camping in Pennsylvania and had picked a campsite way in the back of a National Park. The ranger drove by and we waved. Then he drove by again real slow and looked at us. Then about a half our later here he comes again.

He stops and gets out and and says, "I see you are from Wisconsin" and we say yea, Madison Wisconsin and he says "I have a friend from Madison". Really that's cool what's his name and he says Bob Anderson and Chris and I look at each other and Chris says . . . . That's my brother!

Small World.

On the way back we were in Cleveland and there are few camping places in the middle of Cleveland so we found this hotel. Chris goes up to the guy behind the caged glass window and says how much for a room. The guy looks at use weirdly and says "for how long". Chris has this big "?" above his head and says "All night".

It was a very active hotel it seems, people coming and going all night, must have been a good place. Oddly it was the ONLY time we needed that roll of toilet paper.

That's all I can type.

Cheers
Rod