07-19-2007, 11:28 AM
My 11 y/o daughter and I spent a muggy afternoon at McCormick Field in Asheville NC the other day. The Tourists (the team, not my daughter and I) seem capable, not flashy. A kind of Good Enough team that you see frequently in the bushes. They beat an utterly talentless Greenville team 11-5 in a game that was not nearly as close as the score made it appear.
One Jhaysson Augustin, a chunky lifetime .222 hitting catcher on the Tourist roster, had a career day at the plate. My man hit for the cycle, beginning his nifty 4 for 4 spectacle with an improbable triple that caromed around off the wall and then pinballed around among outfielders like an enraged hornet, stinging off one player's glove and random appendages, and then flying off to torment a scrambling team mate nearby. He gathered it in, dropped it, picked it up, made a hideous bouncing throw which the cutoff man of course dropped.
Augustin's gait while this folly unfolded was a caricature unto itself, he positively chugged along, like some fatigued ancient coal train on the high mountain, so slowly that you found yourself wondering at his cartoonish pace. He took two weeks to arrive at third, seemingly. The Dominican yeoman later launched a hanging curve over the left field wall, smacked a nicely struck double, and a seeing eye grounder to seal an afternoon the likes of which he will never see again. The crowd went positively nuts. There was shrieking, demonic sounds, to go with the usual PA canned hilarity.
On the defensive side of things, Jhaysson suffered outlandishly. He took a foul tip into the groin, and was battered repeatedly like in some boxing highlight reel where an overmatched defenseless Joe Baggadonuts is taking blow after blow, his hands down and sweat flying off him in slo mo violence. He is a lousy defensive player, butchering balls regularly, guys were running all over him.
The whole game had a gladiator flavor to it. Guys were helped from the field in a steady parade of injury, holding this or that body part and baring their teeth in grimaced pain. An opposing player got beaned in the head, he spun like a 220 lb ballarina before writhing for long minutes in the Carolina clay. The stadium PA guy mocked his pain by playing a doofus C&W song while the trainers tended to him.
On the cultural side of things, Miss Western NC was in attendance, a most cheesy five and dime crown upon her head and a sash over her shoulder. It was evident she was paid to walk back and forth the length of the stadium in front of what I would regard to be a substantially low brow crowd. Leathery guys without shirts, packs of country looking kids, groups of folks clustered together with that blunt We Are From Swannanoa aspect about them.
Miss WNC travelled her route with some physical effort, balancing precariously on high heel shoes that she was simply not built to wear. A sturdy country lass, with a large rolling backside that drew to mind the haunches of a black bear, muscled from charging up hillsides. Two Tourist employees, both high school girls, accompanied her with walkie talkies. I could not figure them out...were they to protect her from the adoring public, from the unfortunate commentary authored by tattooed Asheville men soaked in the beery afternoon sun?
It was a fine afternoon, over too soon. At the end of it, walking to our car, a wall of rain passed within a quarter mile of us. We were dry, but it was like a black curtain of water that we could see in the close distance. Watching this I shocked myself, thinking abruptly that my daughter has grown up on me, almost like it had happened in the course of the game.
One Jhaysson Augustin, a chunky lifetime .222 hitting catcher on the Tourist roster, had a career day at the plate. My man hit for the cycle, beginning his nifty 4 for 4 spectacle with an improbable triple that caromed around off the wall and then pinballed around among outfielders like an enraged hornet, stinging off one player's glove and random appendages, and then flying off to torment a scrambling team mate nearby. He gathered it in, dropped it, picked it up, made a hideous bouncing throw which the cutoff man of course dropped.
Augustin's gait while this folly unfolded was a caricature unto itself, he positively chugged along, like some fatigued ancient coal train on the high mountain, so slowly that you found yourself wondering at his cartoonish pace. He took two weeks to arrive at third, seemingly. The Dominican yeoman later launched a hanging curve over the left field wall, smacked a nicely struck double, and a seeing eye grounder to seal an afternoon the likes of which he will never see again. The crowd went positively nuts. There was shrieking, demonic sounds, to go with the usual PA canned hilarity.
On the defensive side of things, Jhaysson suffered outlandishly. He took a foul tip into the groin, and was battered repeatedly like in some boxing highlight reel where an overmatched defenseless Joe Baggadonuts is taking blow after blow, his hands down and sweat flying off him in slo mo violence. He is a lousy defensive player, butchering balls regularly, guys were running all over him.
The whole game had a gladiator flavor to it. Guys were helped from the field in a steady parade of injury, holding this or that body part and baring their teeth in grimaced pain. An opposing player got beaned in the head, he spun like a 220 lb ballarina before writhing for long minutes in the Carolina clay. The stadium PA guy mocked his pain by playing a doofus C&W song while the trainers tended to him.
On the cultural side of things, Miss Western NC was in attendance, a most cheesy five and dime crown upon her head and a sash over her shoulder. It was evident she was paid to walk back and forth the length of the stadium in front of what I would regard to be a substantially low brow crowd. Leathery guys without shirts, packs of country looking kids, groups of folks clustered together with that blunt We Are From Swannanoa aspect about them.
Miss WNC travelled her route with some physical effort, balancing precariously on high heel shoes that she was simply not built to wear. A sturdy country lass, with a large rolling backside that drew to mind the haunches of a black bear, muscled from charging up hillsides. Two Tourist employees, both high school girls, accompanied her with walkie talkies. I could not figure them out...were they to protect her from the adoring public, from the unfortunate commentary authored by tattooed Asheville men soaked in the beery afternoon sun?
It was a fine afternoon, over too soon. At the end of it, walking to our car, a wall of rain passed within a quarter mile of us. We were dry, but it was like a black curtain of water that we could see in the close distance. Watching this I shocked myself, thinking abruptly that my daughter has grown up on me, almost like it had happened in the course of the game.
