The Rookie and the Geezer

I never liked baseball. Got hit in the head a lot because I was so nearsighted that I could never see the ball unless it was in my hand. I had no idea where it was in the sky until it blew up my tortoise framed eyeglasses. Before I was twelve I decided that balls were flying bombs and contrived to lose my first-baseman’s glove (although it did smell wonderful). I gave my baseball to a friend and thus never learned to spit.

Years later I bought a basketball. It was a bigger ball so I thought it would be easier to see, but in play it moved very fast, and when it hit me, it zonked my whole head, and my eyeglasses, and my right knee. Something told me to stop fooling with my balls, I gave the basketball away and consequently failed to learn two important skills of the American athlete— I can’t either dribble or spit.