It was a warm April afternoon. There were four of us, Billy, Bubba-Bubba, Brain and myself playing baseball in Billy’s back yard. Bubba-Bubba was called that because it was what his baby brother called him. Brain got his name on the first day of school in the third grade. His real name, Brian, was misspelled on the roll. The teacher called out “Brain Fowler” and he immediately and forever became “Brain.” Even the girls called him that. At a high school reunion years later, they put “Brain” on his name tag because nobody knew him as Brian. Everybody knew him as Brain.
Billy’s back yard was the neighborhood ballpark. First base was the big tree with the basketball goal. Second base was the middle post of the split rail fence between Billy’s back yard and Brain’s back yard. Third base was a large flat rock, and home was a piece of plywood cut in the shape of home plate and periodically painted white. We played baseball there all spring and summer.
On this particular day, Billy was pitching. I was catching. Bubba-Bubba was in the outfield. Brain was at the plate with an imaginary man on first. In backyard baseball, it was possible to play a full game with as little as two players using imaginary men. The way it worked was that if you hit a single, you ran to first base, declared an imaginary man on first and returned to the plate. The imaginary man then advanced, depending on what you hit. If you hit another single, the imaginary man advanced to second. If you hit a double, he advanced from first to third, and so on. This kept going until you recorded three outs. Then it was the next player’s turn at the plate.
Billy wound up and threw a high hard one right down the middle. Brain was late with his swing, and launched a high foul ball over the eight-foot chain link fence and into The Old Bastard’s back yard. The Old Bastard lived behind Billy. One of the ground Rules of Billy’s back yard was that if you fouled the ball over the fence and The Old Bastard wasn’t in the yard, you had to go after it.
The Old Bastard either hated kids, had a streak of meanness running up his back as wide as your hand, or both. Maybe he had once been a dork and was always the last one picked for backyard ball. Whatever the case, he was sour faced and older than dirt. He had to have been at least in his early fifties. He worked in his back yard all the time. If a ball was hit over the fence and came close to him, he’d glare at it. Then he’d glare at us and pick the ball up. Depending on where he was in the yard, he’d either put it in his pocket, in the trash can, or toss it up on his patio.
“Damn! Is the coast clear?” asked Brain. “I think so,” said Bubba-Bubba, “I don’t see him anywhere.” “Okay, cover me.” Covering meant keeping watch while the ball retrieval was in progress. If The Old Bastard appeared, we would yell a warning. Depending on the situation, a kid had to get to the ball, throw it over the fence into Billy’s yard and climb back to safety, or abort the mission and scale the fence as quickly as possible. It was a decision that had to be made quickly and on the fly.
Brain climbed the fence, sat at the top and assessed the situation. All looked clear, and the ball sat neatly on the grass about halfway up the yard. Brain threw his right leg over the railing, climbed down the chain link about halfway and dropped into No Man’s Land. He looked around again, and then started up the hill toward the ball. Suddenly, The Old Bastard came around the corner of his house and into the back yard. He and Brain spotted each other before we even had a chance to sound a warning. The Old Bastard yelled, “Hey! Get the hell outta my yard!” Brain ran to the ball and scooped it up. The Old Bastard started toward him, waving his rake like a scythe and yelling, “Damn kids!” Brain sprinted toward the fence and threw the ball on the run toward the top if it. The ball made it over, but hit the back of the big tree with the basketball goal. It ricocheted back up into the yard and wound up in about the same spot where Brain had hit it in the first place. The Old Bastard stopped where the ball landed. Brain hit the fence running, scaled it quickly and went over the top and halfway down before dropping to safety. The Old Bastard glared at us. He bent over and picked up the ball, stuck it in his jacket pocket, then walked back up the yard and around the house. “Why didn’t you a-holes yell when he came around the house?” panted Brain. “We didn’t have time,” I said. “He was around the house and spotted you before we knew it.” “I thought he was gonna take my head off with that stupid rake,” said Brain. “He wasn’t even close, “ said Billy. “He stopped chasing you when the ball hit the tree. It bounced back and almost hit him.” “Is that what happened to the ball?” asked Brain. “I was wondering where it went.” “Speaking of which, what are we gonna do now? Has anybody got another ball?” asked Bubba-Bubba. Nobody did, but Billy went inside and came out with one that he had wrapped with black electrical tape after the cover had came off. We played with that one until the tape started coming unwound. The sun was starting to go down. Brain’s mom called for him to come in for supper, so we all went home for the night.
After school the next day, we all showed up at Billy’s back yard, as we did pretty much every day. Bubba-Bubba had a brand new white baseball. “My sister needed notebook paper from the dime store last night, so I went with them and bought a new one out of the barrel. It cost me fifty cents of my own money, so try to keep it in play, okay? He’s up there burning leaves.” Sure enough, The Old Bastard was at the top of his yard, raking leaves into a burning pile.
We drew straws and started the game with Bubba-Bubba pitching, me hitting, Brain catching and Billy in the outfield. Playing outfield actually consisted of playing both infield and outfield. You generally stayed on the infield side of the split rail fence, and if someone hit a ball over into Brain’s back yard, you would hop the fence, field the ball and throw it to the pitcher or the catcher to stop the runner or tag him out. If there was an imaginary man, you could step on a base and force him out, but you couldn’t tag him out. He was, after all, an imaginary man.
I drove in two imaginary men for two runs and scored one myself. In between, I hit a grounder up the middle, and Billy tagged second to force an imaginary man and then threw to Bubba-Bubba covering first for a double play. “This ball’s starting to get a little lopsided,” said Bubba-Bubba. “A few more hits and it’ll be easy to throw a curve.” Two pitches later I flied out to Billy to end my inning.
Bubba-Bubba came in to bat, and I took the mound. He hit a single, put an imaginary man on first, and came back to the plate. The ball was indeed getting lopsided, as the balls from the dime store barrel tended to do after they had been hit a few times. Before long, it would have roughly the same shape and density as an orange. I gripped the ball on the seams and, flicking my wrist the way my Little League coach Mr. Jones had shown me, threw a nasty curve to Bubba-Bubba that tied him up inside. Strike one. Then I threw a fastball on the outside of the plate, and he fouled it way over the fence, up into the yard right where The Old Bastard was burning leaves. Without even acknowledging us, he walked over to the ball, picked it up and threw it on the fire. “Hey! That was a brand new ball! I paid fifty cents of my own money for it at the dime store!” yelled Bubba-Bubba. The Old Bastard, looking like he had just smelled a chunk of Limburger cheese, just glared at him and went back to work raking and burning. We all stood there looking at Bubba-Bubba with our mouths hanging open. He had broken new ground. No one had ever even spoken to the Old Bastard before, let alone yelled at him.
“I’ll go home and get my brother’s ball,” sighed Brain. “No,” said Bubba-Bubba, looking up into The Old Bastard’s yard, “that’s the last straw. I’ve had enough of that old goat. This means war, and I’ve got a plan.” “What are you talking about?” I asked. He smiled and said, “Sit down, gentlemen, and we’ll discuss it.” So the four of us sat down around the tree root that served as the pitching rubber, and Bubba-Bubba laid out the details for Operation Weed-B-Gon.