00:00:05 Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves. From coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast the airwaves have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share. Baseball. If there's a closed second to spending time in the outdoors. For me, it's baseball, and for someone who never played it beyond high school, it remains a passion. For me. I only follow a handful of players, and I actually met them last year on a coon hunt. They invited me to go on with them. Aiden and Grant Anderson are brothers. They're twins, and they're pitchers. Aiden is in the Texas Rangers organization and Grant pitches for the Milwaukee Brewers. Now, the funny thing about that is when they talk to me, all they want to talk about is coon hunting, and all I want to talk about is baseball. Now, I couldn't tell you off the top of my head who won the last World Series without thinking about it real hard, and even then it would probably be just a guess. Besides the Anderson brothers, the last stats I kept up with were mine when I played. I just liked the game, the history and the romance of it. For me, it's truly America's pastime. Bailey and I go to a lot of games here the Arkansas Travelers, which are the Double A affiliate of the Seattle Mariners. A perfect even for us is to grab a hot dog or a fried bologna sandwich at the game for supper and cheer for the Travelers and clap along with the guy playing the organ. We don't know any of the players because the good ones don't stick around long. They neither do the bad ones. The good ones move on up to the big leagues, and the other guys they just move on. But the atmosphere is all about family and fun, two things that I never get enough of. I've got a lot to talk about, so let's get to it. This past week we were on vacation, soaking up the sun on the Emerald Coast of Florida. The main point of our journey was threefold. One was for Bailey to see the ocean for the first time. Another one was to watch the son of friends play in an original World Series Baseball tournament, and to relax and enjoy each other's company. All of those things in no particular However, Bailey seeing the ocean for the first time during her short tenure here on Earth was accomplished first in only minutes after we set our bags down inside the big house we'd rented for the week. She tried to play a cool but you could see the excitement in her eyes as she gazed out at the horizon, seeing nothing but incoming waves and the occasional seagull. A few seconds after her first glimpse, she was standing in the surf, staring south at infinity and literally and figuratively soaking it all in clouds in the evening golf breeze kept the temperature bay. It was the perfect introduction the rest of us in George seeing her see it for the first time, as much as we did see in it ourselves. I asked her later what she thought about it. I was expecting to lecture on why hadn't we brought her here before? Now? The last time we went to the beach, she was still three years away from entering the reeves. Family chat, and she said I liked it and I would like to go again sometime, but it smelled weird and I'd rather go to the mountains. I did not see that coming from a girl who almost has to be made to wear anything other than shorts at gunpoint. Daddy, if you say we're going to the beach, I'll be ready to go and have a good time. But if you give me a choice that's not New York City, I'm picking the mountains. The mountains for the love of humanity. It seems there's a tiny little hillbilly hiding inside her head. I blame Clay. They counting two sets of parents, two sets of grandparents, a girlfriend, a best friend, and all the children, we had enough folks to fill the baseball team and a basketball team. Fourteen ar Kansas listed on the program as family either by blood or choice, and we were all there to watch baseball. It's no secret that our family loves baseball and has for as far back as I can remember. Every cotton picking one of us, my brothers, me and anyone we could scrounge up around the farm to play baseball from our friends that lived only a bike's ride away or the occasional farmhan. The American pastime was our pastime. Now we played a game called five dollars. One person with bat balls to the rest of us positioned all around the yard, either by himself or if we had plenty of folks, someone would pitch. Every fly ball you caught was worth a dollar. Every groundball you caught was worth fifty cents. And when your total catch is added up to exactly five dollars, it was your turn to bat make an air filled and a grounder or a fly ball, and you'd lose the value of whatever ball that was. Now another game we played with it's called flies and skinners. That was basically scored the same way. Once you caught the predetermined amount of each, it was your turn to back and we spent hours and hours playing each in our three acre front yard. It took forever to mow it, but when we finished it, man, it was quite the ballpark. Breaks would come and we drank from the hose, or someone would have a watermelon busted, and we'd go through one of them like grass goes through a goose. It wouldn't last long. Then back to the game. Baseball to us was just a natural part of summer. It could be too hot to fish, and by that I mean it could be too hot for the fish to bite. But it was never too hot to play baseball, never, regardless of the time of day. They say you can always go home when you can't go anywhere else. Well, for us, when you couldn't do anything else outside, you could always play baseball. Being inside was not an option. There were three channels on the TV, and unless you like soap operas or sesime street, outside was where the fun took place, no matter of the temperature. I've told the story before, but I accentuated a different part of it, And for those who haven't heard it, I'm going to tell it again, and I'm going to give you the reader's digest version of it. And it's a good story. I like to hear it myself. But after a hot summer day of playing baseball in the front yard, we took a break to go inside any dinner, which is what the rest of humanity calls lunch, except for a few of us die hard traditions. Anyway, my brother Tim was a senior in high school, my brother Chuck was a sophomore, and I was headed to the sixth grade, all the chores had been done. It was too hot for anything else but baseball. A metric ton of fried bologna, sandwiches, potato chips, a kool aid later, and the game was about to start. I was first out the door, and there laid the bat, a thirty two inch wood at a Rondack baseball bat made from the finest white ash a Yankee tree farmer could grow. The handle was thin and it fit my hands good, even though it could have been a few inches shorter. It was light and I could handle it well. And I heard my brothers talking inside the house as I stood on the porch, and they were arguing over whose turn it was to bat. It was my turn, I called it before we stopped to eat. They must not have heard me. Oh they heard me, all right. They just didn't care. But I cared, and I'd had enough of them cheating me out of my turn. They could run faster than me and would jump in front of me when I was only a fly or a skinner away from batting. Now they were gonna jyp me out of starting off the afternoon session, so I decided to kill the first one that walked out the door. Now, not really, but I was just going to give them a little wat four on top of the nogging with that bat. When they stepped out on the porch. Mama had an old milk churn sitting beside the front door on the left side, and to compensate for them being taller than me, I stood up on that churn and I waited for the first one to step outside the door. Didn't matter to me which one it was. They had both dashed at my expense, and now it was time to pay the fiddler. It sounded like a cartoon bunk when the barrel of that bat made square contact with the top of Ten's head. He staggered toward the edge of the porch, trying not to lose his balance, and during the three or four seconds he fought to stay conscious. I realized then that I had chosen poorly. He caught me before I made it in the loft of the barn. I was wandering away from sanctuary and being able to keep him beat away from the only access to the loft until Mama got home. But I was not built for speed, a malady that has haunted me all my life. He had me squalling in very short ones now. That sound and one other stand out to me as core memories associated with baseball. Both of them attributed to the crack of a bat. The other one was my first home run. I don't know how many I hit in the Little League. If you told me that the one I'm going to tell you about now was the only one, I couldn't argue with you, because that one shocked me more than it did anyone else. I was batting clean up, and Darryl Harvey, a classmate and childhood friend, was pitching for the opposition, Merchants and Planners Bank. It was early in the season and every team was scratching and clawing to establish themselves as the ones to beat. I played for Harvest Brothers, our dealership in town. Our uniforms were green jerseys trimmed in white and yellow breeches with white pinstripes that stopped just below the knee, and green baseball stirrups worn over white socks. I wore number five, like my favorite Major leaguer, George Brett of the Kansas City Royals. The count was two and two, and I had looked at four pitches and never took the bat off my shoulder. I looked at the first base coach, mister Mike Meedy, and he looked back at me as if to say, why are you toting that bat if you ain't gonna swing it. I checked third base and mister Pat Vallentine was looking at me the same way. Time to go to work. Brand Darrell started his wind up and groove a fastball right down the middle of the plate. They looked as big as a pone of corn bread. I sent it over the fence and left center with the easiest swing I've ever taken. It was almost effortless, and the sound of that ball leaving that wooden was pure and unmistakable. Nothing else sounds like it, and when you hear it, you know it right away. Ted Williams, arguably one of the greatest hitters of all times, said the hardest thing to do in baseball is to hit a round baseball with a round bat squarely. I'd say that's right, considering that if you do that three times out of ten over the course of your professional career, you go to the Hall of Fame. I looked up at mister Meadie as I touched first base during my victory lab and I remember him smiling and pat me on the back and saying, slow down, son, they can't get you out. Hitting home runs was easy. I decided, right then, I do that every time. I had three more bats during that beatdown of merchants and planters, and Daryl struck me out all three times. Hitting homers wasn't as easy as I thought. Another front yard baseball session that summer was interrupted when our brother Chuck walked out on the porch to tell Tim and I that Elvis died. It was August sixteenth, nineteen seventy seven. I remember what Chuck was wearing when he walked out on the porch to tell us. I can see it as plain as day. It's funny the things you remember that are associated with historic events. Baseball has been intertwined with reural life as much more than any other sport, The threads of each woven in the fabric of Americana that remained as true today as they did back then. Bats for kids are aluminum now, with teams having multiple uniforms, and batting gloves and sliding gloves and fielding gloves and pitching gloves, and games played on turf painted to look like dirt with removable mouths to accommodate different levels of baseball. The constant throughout is the baseball itself, nine to nine and a quarter inches in circumference and await between five and five in the quarter ounces. Now, we watched kids from all over the country play ball in the impressive Florida heat, and I was reminded immediately of how hot it was when we played it home, and how, just like me back then, they didn't seem to notice it much. Teammates, friends, coaches, umpires, family, people of all ages gathered to watch a game, a game played by children who some grown ups expected to perform like adults, and when they didn't, those grown ups acted like children. Now there wasn't much of it. In fact, there was very little, but we all know it happens. Our boys played well, They tried hard, and they battled back after two initial losses, and they finished well. They didn't win the series, but they didn't finish last either, And had they lost every game but tried and above all else to win, you'd have to count that as a success as well. What will it matter ten years from now? It won't. They'll always remember that experience, but they'll remember in detail how hard they tried, or if they didn't. I vaguely remember the sight of that first home run boss settling over that fence in nineteen seventy seven, but I remember vividly walking back to the dugout with my friends, cheering and laughing and celebrating together. It was an individual achievement that stands in the shadow of a team celebration. And whether you're playing for Harvests Brothers Little League team and Warren Arkansas where the Kansas City rolls, it doesn't matter because so your breeches can be above your knee or down around jangles. You can swing a metal bat or one made from wood. You can play under the lights or under the sun. But at every level you have to hit, throw, and catch the three elements of baseball. Everything else it's just extra. That's how kids can gather in any space where, in anything, with nothing other than a stick and a ball and have fun. It really is. That's simple. Food, shelter, and clothing are the three basic necessities of life. We add things to it to make it more enjoyable, exciting, rewarding, or comfortable, whatever adjective you want to use for every desired amenity, the same holds true for baseball, signs for hitting, signs for stealing, signs for pitching, shifting the outfield, shifting the infield, lefties versus rightings, and all the analytics that go into the game. Now, the game can theoretically go on forever. Like life, you're not exactly sure when it will end. That's the allure for me in The main similarity I see in each of them is life like baseball is about and join the game. It can be in the front yard of a country home, an empty lot in town, a little league field at the YMC eight, or the finest manicured field in the Major leagues. Baseball is a game that mirrors the ebb and flow of life metaphor for patience and practice, skill of being able to hit Whateff's thrown at you, and life has some nasty curveballs. I thank y'all so much for listening to us here on the Beargers Channel. Be claying, old Lake Pickle, work hard to bring you the best content that we can. Just subscribe to the channel and rip the knob off all right. Before I get out of here, I gotta give you some news. July the eighteenth, This country life hats are hitting the website. You'll be able to get them there. Check them out. They're really cool. I'm really proud of how they looked. Going to be great. So until next week, This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be shut