Honk

While on Staten Island yesterday, visiting the family for a celebration of the 10-year anniversary of Mike Stanley's 3-HR game (oh, and my brother Patrick's birthday), I got a call from another brother of mine, Ian. He asked me if I wanted to play baseball with his team. I said yes. And so for the first time in seven years, I played a baseball game.

It was phenomenal. Highlights included misplaying the first ball hit to me into a double, batting last and going 0-2 with two strikeouts. Overall, a pretty miserable day individually. And we lost 15-3. Still, I had a tremendous amount of fun playing leftfield next to Ian, who played a truly spectacular centerfield and went 1-3 from the leadoff spot. And I did catch the last three balls hit to me, which isn't bad.

Anyway, the true high point of the day came in the fourth inning (I think) with the bases loaded. Their clean-up hitter was up, which for all you non-fans is typically the best power hitter on a team. I say this so that you will not be surprised when I say he LAUNCHED a ball into deep left-center field, directly into a flock of geese.

I should mention now that the field we played on was in Clove Lake Park, which is notorious for being riddled with goose feces. Rarely had I ever seen the source geese themselves, but they were out in full force yesterday, honking mildly just a few yards behind me. They were big, beautiful geese, not white but greenish-blackish Canadian geese, heads probably coming up to mid-thigh or higher. Boy, I thought constantly throughout the course of the game, It sure would be something if someone hit it into the geese. And like I mentioned, someone did. Since it was in left-center, Ian and I ran after the ball. Through the geese.

To be honest, I was expecting a cacophanous fray of feathers and flapping and wings and honking and maybe accidentally stepping on a goose. Instead, the geese hardly moved. They walked away from us, prefering not to be near us I suppose, but not at all alarmed. So for the most part, we were running alongside and dodging giant goose after giant goose. My faster brother got to the ball and chucked it back into the infield, "holding" the batter to a 3-run triple. As we turned to jog back to our positions, a narrow path had finally been cleared, with walls of geese on either side of us.

So I would have to say my favorite memory of yesterday was running through the geese with my brother.