I don't mean this to become the baseball blog. There are a whole lot of other people out there who know more about baseball than I, but it's what's looming large in my life right now, so it's what I write about.

Besides--it's a good game. I'm still trying to write a convincing piece portraying baseball as an allegory for life...

Anyway, tonight was interesting. We play baseball/softball at five different venues, boasting a total of 11 different fields. Since my son plays junior league, I generally only spend my time at the one park where junior league games are played. I spend a lot of time on the phone, liaising with umpires and managers, but I'm there to watch my son's games. Tonight I went to the venue where the minor leagues play to watch my son call his first game as an umpire (and to slap the snot out of any managers/parents who made asses of themselves, but I didn't tell him that...I was just there to watch him).

An issue arose out of the parking situation. The fields are on top of a hill and the parking lot is at the bottom of the hill. Every year dozens of parents ignore the annual speech about parking only in the parking lot and drive cross-country to the top of the hill. It's a combination of laziness and arrogance, I think. Beyond the fact that they've been told not to do that, the bigger issues are that they park in a tree sanctuary and we have been told if it continues we'll lose access to those fields. Of course the lazy, arrogant, overweight parents don't give a damn...

I counted 20 vehicles on the hiltop.

So I went to the two active fields and told the four managers that they needed to tell their parents to move their vehicles. All four claimed they had already polled their parents and none of them were parked on the hill. Yeah, right. Not the managers--the parents lie like hell.

While I'm doing this, a parent comes up to me and asks "What is 'he' doing here?". Damnded if I know. It turns out 'he' is the guy who got tossed from the game on Saturday. So far we haven't been able to figure out who 'he' is. The manager on his son's team pled ignorance until tonight, when he got put in a corner and couldn't plead ignorance any more. It's already been decreed that whoever 'he' is, he can't attend another game until he appears before a board (that's a county rec league rule) and pleads his case. So I grabbed the manager and took him with me to inform this guy that he cannot attend another game until the requirements have been met.

Don't ever move back home. I've lived in a lot of places. New Hampshire was my favorite. Liked Bavaria a lot, but it wasn't home--good old USA. But someone once said "You can't go home again". Good advice.

Turns out the guy I threw off the field is married to the sister of the girl I took to my high school junior prom 28 years ago. A stunning redhead beauty, she's still very attractive despite having put on a few middle-age pounds.

And her husband doesn't deserve her.........Anyway...