C.O.L.D.

Think back with me, if you will, to a summer Saturday in 2014. Can you see it?  Can you see the big, bright, golden sun? Can you breathe the warm, nay HOT, stagnant air?  Can you feel how soft the asphalt is? Picture that Saturday in your mind - a day when you didn't come out to play wiffle.

What was keeping you from that perfect wiffle day?  Getting an early start on the vacuuming. "Fixing" the car. "Dance rehearsal" (WTH?). Being on the other side of the planet teaching philosophy to young communists. Or simply not getting out of bed. Whatever was your reason, today seven hearty wifflers atoned for these omissions, omissions too numerous to count, failures we speak aloud and those we keep in the silence of our minds, with a game at Nance Bradds in Arctic conditions.

It was a tip-o-the-cap to wifflers past, who no longer play with us. It was a gesture to the Wiffle Gods to acknowledge that the rainless Saturdays of summer are few, precious, and not to be wasted skipping wiffle.  It was quite probably the dumbest thing we, collectively, have ever done.

I want to tell you that our fastballs cut through the frigid air with thunderclaps of friction heat.  I want to tell you that the frozen plastic balls shattered like icicles upon impact with the bricks. I want to tell you about mighty clouts carried over the fences by relentless freezing winds.

None of that happened.

What happened was seven men pretended to be enjoying ourselves playing wiffle in sub-freezing temperatures. What we did enjoy was getting together in one place rather than on Facebook.  Hansoo drove in two runs in the top of the second with a triple and that was all the scoring.  We'd had enough after four innings, and went to Dr. Hume's cozy home for mimosas and coffee.