Baseball

Many years ago I was fortunate to visit Houston, in Texas, on business. Whilst there my hosts took me to the Houston Astrodome to see the Astros play baseball. I cannot say that I understood what was going on, but I enjoyed that evening and the whole atmosphere at the game.

When I got back to England, I wondered why, at the time, we did not play so much baseball in the UK. We play football, (soccer), rugby and cricket but not baseball. A few business friends and I decided to set up a baseball team and perhaps help promote the game round our town.

We advertised our intentions in the newspapers and for a week or so waited for people to come forwards wishing to play the game. We did not receive one reply to our advert.

It was then that we realised that we had not put an address or phone number for people to contact us. So we ran the advert again and got a few volunteers wanting to learn to play baseball.

Sadly, most of them were totally useless. One of them got hit in the head by the ball and ended up in hospital. Another got hit much lower down his body and he too went to hospital. His wife was none too pleased about where he got hurt. All in all our efforts to build up a team of players seemed to be a difficult task ahead. But we persevered. We hired a coach who knew a thing or two about baseball and we trained these youngsters as best we could.

One day, a horse came into my office. He was quite confident as he pulled up a chair and sat there lighting a cigarette. He said that he wanted to join our baseball team and that he could play very well.

I could not believe my eyes. Or ears for that matter. I had a horse in my office wanting to play baseball.

I told him there and then that it was against the rules.

He smiled and said, "No it isn't. Check it out!"

Believe me ... this is true ... honest ... We did check out the rules and there is nothing to say that a horse cannot play baseball. If you don't believe me then check it out yourselves. You'll see I am telling the truth.

As a matter of interest, we also checked the cricket rules too, and there's nothing there about horses either.

Well, as it happened, we had a game scheduled for that very Saturday. So we decided that our horse would be the first one to start the game. He held the bat tightly in his hand, (or hoof), and faced the pitcher. (You see, I know the right term to use for the guy who throws the ball).

Our horse hit the ball so hard that it flew high in the sky at a million miles an hour and I think it landed three or four streets away from where we were playing.

Everyone was totally astounded and flabbergasted at the same time.

The horse just stood still, totally frozen, and did not move a muscle.

"RUN ... RUN ..." I shouted at him, "RUN !!!!"

"Run?" he said, "Run? If I could run I'd be at the Kentucky Derby not in your poxy English town!"