July 11, 2025 • 18 mins
This week, Brent's sharing his passion for baseball with some stories from his childhood. He has a special affinity for America's pastime, but his favorite part of it isn't the players - it's the game itself. The similarities he sees between life and baseball are close. You'll have to listen to see if you agree. Batter up! It's time for MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves.
From coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
I want you to stay a while as I share
my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented
by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you
the best outdoor podcast the airwaves have to offer. All right, friends,
(00:28):
grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some
stories to share. Baseball. If there's a closed second to
spending time in the outdoors. For me, it's baseball, and
for someone who never played it beyond high school, it
(00:49):
remains a passion. For me. I only follow a handful
of players, and I actually met them last year on
a coon hunt. They invited me to go on with them.
Aiden and Grant Anderson are brothers. They're twins, and they're pitchers.
Aiden is in the Texas Rangers organization and Grant pitches
(01:10):
for the Milwaukee Brewers. Now, the funny thing about that
is when they talk to me, all they want to
talk about is coon hunting, and all I want to
talk about is baseball. Now, I couldn't tell you off
the top of my head who won the last World
Series without thinking about it real hard, and even then
it would probably be just a guess. Besides the Anderson brothers,
(01:33):
the last stats I kept up with were mine when
I played. I just liked the game, the history and
the romance of it. For me, it's truly America's pastime.
Bailey and I go to a lot of games here
the Arkansas Travelers, which are the Double A affiliate of
the Seattle Mariners. A perfect even for us is to
(01:56):
grab a hot dog or a fried bologna sandwich at
the game for supper and cheer for the Travelers and
clap along with the guy playing the organ. We don't
know any of the players because the good ones don't
stick around long. They neither do the bad ones. The
good ones move on up to the big leagues, and
the other guys they just move on. But the atmosphere
(02:19):
is all about family and fun, two things that I
never get enough of. I've got a lot to talk about,
so let's get to it. This past week we were
on vacation, soaking up the sun on the Emerald Coast
(02:39):
of Florida. The main point of our journey was threefold.
One was for Bailey to see the ocean for the
first time. Another one was to watch the son of
friends play in an original World Series Baseball tournament, and
to relax and enjoy each other's company. All of those
things in no particular However, Bailey seeing the ocean for
(03:02):
the first time during her short tenure here on Earth
was accomplished first in only minutes after we set our
bags down inside the big house we'd rented for the week.
She tried to play a cool but you could see
the excitement in her eyes as she gazed out at
the horizon, seeing nothing but incoming waves and the occasional seagull.
(03:24):
A few seconds after her first glimpse, she was standing
in the surf, staring south at infinity and literally and
figuratively soaking it all in clouds in the evening golf
breeze kept the temperature bay. It was the perfect introduction
the rest of us in George seeing her see it
(03:44):
for the first time, as much as we did see
in it ourselves. I asked her later what she thought
about it. I was expecting to lecture on why hadn't
we brought her here before? Now? The last time we
went to the beach, she was still three years away
from entering the reeves. Family chat, and she said I
(04:05):
liked it and I would like to go again sometime,
but it smelled weird and I'd rather go to the mountains.
I did not see that coming from a girl who
almost has to be made to wear anything other than
shorts at gunpoint. Daddy, if you say we're going to
the beach, I'll be ready to go and have a
(04:26):
good time. But if you give me a choice that's
not New York City, I'm picking the mountains. The mountains
for the love of humanity. It seems there's a tiny
little hillbilly hiding inside her head. I blame Clay. They
counting two sets of parents, two sets of grandparents, a girlfriend,
(04:47):
a best friend, and all the children, we had enough
folks to fill the baseball team and a basketball team.
Fourteen ar Kansas listed on the program as family either
by blood or choice, and we were all there to
watch baseball. It's no secret that our family loves baseball
(05:07):
and has for as far back as I can remember.
Every cotton picking one of us, my brothers, me and
anyone we could scrounge up around the farm to play
baseball from our friends that lived only a bike's ride
away or the occasional farmhan. The American pastime was our pastime.
Now we played a game called five dollars. One person
(05:29):
with bat balls to the rest of us positioned all
around the yard, either by himself or if we had
plenty of folks, someone would pitch. Every fly ball you
caught was worth a dollar. Every groundball you caught was
worth fifty cents. And when your total catch is added
up to exactly five dollars, it was your turn to
(05:50):
bat make an air filled and a grounder or a
fly ball, and you'd lose the value of whatever ball
that was. Now another game we played with it's called
flies and skinners. That was basically scored the same way.
Once you caught the predetermined amount of each, it was
your turn to back and we spent hours and hours
playing each in our three acre front yard. It took
(06:13):
forever to mow it, but when we finished it, man,
it was quite the ballpark. Breaks would come and we
drank from the hose, or someone would have a watermelon busted,
and we'd go through one of them like grass goes
through a goose. It wouldn't last long. Then back to
the game. Baseball to us was just a natural part
(06:34):
of summer. It could be too hot to fish, and
by that I mean it could be too hot for
the fish to bite. But it was never too hot
to play baseball, never, regardless of the time of day.
They say you can always go home when you can't
go anywhere else. Well, for us, when you couldn't do
anything else outside, you could always play baseball. Being inside
(06:57):
was not an option. There were three channels on the TV,
and unless you like soap operas or sesime street, outside
was where the fun took place, no matter of the temperature.
I've told the story before, but I accentuated a different
part of it, And for those who haven't heard it,
I'm going to tell it again, and I'm going to
give you the reader's digest version of it. And it's
(07:18):
a good story. I like to hear it myself. But
after a hot summer day of playing baseball in the
front yard, we took a break to go inside any dinner,
which is what the rest of humanity calls lunch, except
for a few of us die hard traditions. Anyway, my
brother Tim was a senior in high school, my brother
(07:39):
Chuck was a sophomore, and I was headed to the
sixth grade, all the chores had been done. It was
too hot for anything else but baseball. A metric ton
of fried bologna, sandwiches, potato chips, a kool aid later,
and the game was about to start. I was first
out the door, and there laid the bat, a thirty
two inch wood at a Rondack baseball bat made from
(08:02):
the finest white ash a Yankee tree farmer could grow.
The handle was thin and it fit my hands good,
even though it could have been a few inches shorter.
It was light and I could handle it well. And
I heard my brothers talking inside the house as I
stood on the porch, and they were arguing over whose
turn it was to bat. It was my turn, I
(08:26):
called it before we stopped to eat. They must not
have heard me. Oh they heard me, all right. They
just didn't care. But I cared, and I'd had enough
of them cheating me out of my turn. They could
run faster than me and would jump in front of
me when I was only a fly or a skinner
away from batting. Now they were gonna jyp me out
(08:48):
of starting off the afternoon session, so I decided to
kill the first one that walked out the door. Now,
not really, but I was just going to give them
a little wat four on top of the nogging with
that bat. When they stepped out on the porch. Mama
had an old milk churn sitting beside the front door
on the left side, and to compensate for them being
(09:11):
taller than me, I stood up on that churn and
I waited for the first one to step outside the door.
Didn't matter to me which one it was. They had
both dashed at my expense, and now it was time
to pay the fiddler. It sounded like a cartoon bunk
when the barrel of that bat made square contact with
the top of Ten's head. He staggered toward the edge
(09:35):
of the porch, trying not to lose his balance, and
during the three or four seconds he fought to stay conscious.
I realized then that I had chosen poorly. He caught
me before I made it in the loft of the barn.
I was wandering away from sanctuary and being able to
keep him beat away from the only access to the
loft until Mama got home. But I was not built
(09:57):
for speed, a malady that has haunted me all my life.
He had me squalling in very short ones now. That
sound and one other stand out to me as core
memories associated with baseball. Both of them attributed to the
(10:21):
crack of a bat. The other one was my first
home run. I don't know how many I hit in
the Little League. If you told me that the one
I'm going to tell you about now was the only one,
I couldn't argue with you, because that one shocked me
more than it did anyone else. I was batting clean up,
(10:42):
and Darryl Harvey, a classmate and childhood friend, was pitching
for the opposition, Merchants and Planners Bank. It was early
in the season and every team was scratching and clawing
to establish themselves as the ones to beat. I played
for Harvest Brothers, our dealership in town. Our uniforms were
(11:02):
green jerseys trimmed in white and yellow breeches with white
pinstripes that stopped just below the knee, and green baseball
stirrups worn over white socks. I wore number five, like
my favorite Major leaguer, George Brett of the Kansas City Royals.
The count was two and two, and I had looked
at four pitches and never took the bat off my shoulder.
(11:27):
I looked at the first base coach, mister Mike Meedy,
and he looked back at me as if to say,
why are you toting that bat if you ain't gonna
swing it. I checked third base and mister Pat Vallentine
was looking at me the same way. Time to go
to work. Brand Darrell started his wind up and groove
a fastball right down the middle of the plate. They
(11:49):
looked as big as a pone of corn bread. I
sent it over the fence and left center with the
easiest swing I've ever taken. It was almost effortless, and
the sound of that ball leaving that wooden was pure
and unmistakable. Nothing else sounds like it, and when you
hear it, you know it right away. Ted Williams, arguably
(12:12):
one of the greatest hitters of all times, said the
hardest thing to do in baseball is to hit a
round baseball with a round bat squarely. I'd say that's right,
considering that if you do that three times out of
ten over the course of your professional career, you go
to the Hall of Fame. I looked up at mister
Meadie as I touched first base during my victory lab
(12:35):
and I remember him smiling and pat me on the
back and saying, slow down, son, they can't get you out.
Hitting home runs was easy. I decided, right then, I
do that every time. I had three more bats during
that beatdown of merchants and planters, and Daryl struck me
out all three times. Hitting homers wasn't as easy as
(12:58):
I thought. Another front yard baseball session that summer was
interrupted when our brother Chuck walked out on the porch
to tell Tim and I that Elvis died. It was
August sixteenth, nineteen seventy seven. I remember what Chuck was
wearing when he walked out on the porch to tell us.
(13:19):
I can see it as plain as day. It's funny
the things you remember that are associated with historic events.
Baseball has been intertwined with reural life as much more
than any other sport, The threads of each woven in
the fabric of Americana that remained as true today as
they did back then. Bats for kids are aluminum now,
(13:41):
with teams having multiple uniforms, and batting gloves and sliding
gloves and fielding gloves and pitching gloves, and games played
on turf painted to look like dirt with removable mouths
to accommodate different levels of baseball. The constant throughout is
the baseball itself, nine to nine and a quarter inches
(14:02):
in circumference and await between five and five in the
quarter ounces. Now, we watched kids from all over the
country play ball in the impressive Florida heat, and I
was reminded immediately of how hot it was when we
played it home, and how, just like me back then,
they didn't seem to notice it much. Teammates, friends, coaches, umpires, family,
(14:25):
people of all ages gathered to watch a game, a
game played by children who some grown ups expected to
perform like adults, and when they didn't, those grown ups
acted like children. Now there wasn't much of it. In fact,
there was very little, but we all know it happens.
(14:46):
Our boys played well, They tried hard, and they battled
back after two initial losses, and they finished well. They
didn't win the series, but they didn't finish last either,
And had they lost every game but tried and above
all else to win, you'd have to count that as
a success as well. What will it matter ten years
(15:07):
from now? It won't. They'll always remember that experience, but
they'll remember in detail how hard they tried, or if
they didn't. I vaguely remember the sight of that first
home run boss settling over that fence in nineteen seventy seven,
but I remember vividly walking back to the dugout with
(15:28):
my friends, cheering and laughing and celebrating together. It was
an individual achievement that stands in the shadow of a
team celebration. And whether you're playing for Harvests Brothers Little
League team and Warren Arkansas where the Kansas City rolls,
it doesn't matter because so your breeches can be above
your knee or down around jangles. You can swing a
(15:50):
metal bat or one made from wood. You can play
under the lights or under the sun. But at every
level you have to hit, throw, and catch the three
elements of baseball. Everything else it's just extra. That's how
kids can gather in any space where, in anything, with
(16:11):
nothing other than a stick and a ball and have fun.
It really is. That's simple. Food, shelter, and clothing are
the three basic necessities of life. We add things to
it to make it more enjoyable, exciting, rewarding, or comfortable,
whatever adjective you want to use for every desired amenity,
(16:33):
the same holds true for baseball, signs for hitting, signs
for stealing, signs for pitching, shifting the outfield, shifting the infield,
lefties versus rightings, and all the analytics that go into
the game. Now, the game can theoretically go on forever.
Like life, you're not exactly sure when it will end.
(16:55):
That's the allure for me in The main similarity I
see in each of them is life like baseball is
about and join the game. It can be in the
front yard of a country home, an empty lot in town,
a little league field at the YMC eight, or the
finest manicured field in the Major leagues. Baseball is a
(17:16):
game that mirrors the ebb and flow of life metaphor
for patience and practice, skill of being able to hit
Whateff's thrown at you, and life has some nasty curveballs.
I thank y'all so much for listening to us here
on the Beargers Channel. Be claying, old Lake Pickle, work
(17:37):
hard to bring you the best content that we can.
Just subscribe to the channel and rip the knob off
all right. Before I get out of here, I gotta
give you some news. July the eighteenth, This country life
hats are hitting the website. You'll be able to get
them there. Check them out. They're really cool. I'm really
proud of how they looked. Going to be great. So
(18:00):
until next week, This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all
be shut
Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves.
From coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
I want you to stay a while as I share
my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented
by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you
the best outdoor podcast the airwaves have to offer. All right, friends,
(00:28):
grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some
stories to share. Baseball. If there's a closed second to
spending time in the outdoors. For me, it's baseball, and
for someone who never played it beyond high school, it
(00:49):
remains a passion. For me. I only follow a handful
of players, and I actually met them last year on
a coon hunt. They invited me to go on with them.
Aiden and Grant Anderson are brothers. They're twins, and they're pitchers.
Aiden is in the Texas Rangers organization and Grant pitches
(01:10):
for the Milwaukee Brewers. Now, the funny thing about that
is when they talk to me, all they want to
talk about is coon hunting, and all I want to
talk about is baseball. Now, I couldn't tell you off
the top of my head who won the last World
Series without thinking about it real hard, and even then
it would probably be just a guess. Besides the Anderson brothers,
(01:33):
the last stats I kept up with were mine when
I played. I just liked the game, the history and
the romance of it. For me, it's truly America's pastime.
Bailey and I go to a lot of games here
the Arkansas Travelers, which are the Double A affiliate of
the Seattle Mariners. A perfect even for us is to
(01:56):
grab a hot dog or a fried bologna sandwich at
the game for supper and cheer for the Travelers and
clap along with the guy playing the organ. We don't
know any of the players because the good ones don't
stick around long. They neither do the bad ones. The
good ones move on up to the big leagues, and
the other guys they just move on. But the atmosphere
(02:19):
is all about family and fun, two things that I
never get enough of. I've got a lot to talk about,
so let's get to it. This past week we were
on vacation, soaking up the sun on the Emerald Coast
(02:39):
of Florida. The main point of our journey was threefold.
One was for Bailey to see the ocean for the
first time. Another one was to watch the son of
friends play in an original World Series Baseball tournament, and
to relax and enjoy each other's company. All of those
things in no particular However, Bailey seeing the ocean for
(03:02):
the first time during her short tenure here on Earth
was accomplished first in only minutes after we set our
bags down inside the big house we'd rented for the week.
She tried to play a cool but you could see
the excitement in her eyes as she gazed out at
the horizon, seeing nothing but incoming waves and the occasional seagull.
(03:24):
A few seconds after her first glimpse, she was standing
in the surf, staring south at infinity and literally and
figuratively soaking it all in clouds in the evening golf
breeze kept the temperature bay. It was the perfect introduction
the rest of us in George seeing her see it
(03:44):
for the first time, as much as we did see
in it ourselves. I asked her later what she thought
about it. I was expecting to lecture on why hadn't
we brought her here before? Now? The last time we
went to the beach, she was still three years away
from entering the reeves. Family chat, and she said I
(04:05):
liked it and I would like to go again sometime,
but it smelled weird and I'd rather go to the mountains.
I did not see that coming from a girl who
almost has to be made to wear anything other than
shorts at gunpoint. Daddy, if you say we're going to
the beach, I'll be ready to go and have a
(04:26):
good time. But if you give me a choice that's
not New York City, I'm picking the mountains. The mountains
for the love of humanity. It seems there's a tiny
little hillbilly hiding inside her head. I blame Clay. They
counting two sets of parents, two sets of grandparents, a girlfriend,
(04:47):
a best friend, and all the children, we had enough
folks to fill the baseball team and a basketball team.
Fourteen ar Kansas listed on the program as family either
by blood or choice, and we were all there to
watch baseball. It's no secret that our family loves baseball
(05:07):
and has for as far back as I can remember.
Every cotton picking one of us, my brothers, me and
anyone we could scrounge up around the farm to play
baseball from our friends that lived only a bike's ride
away or the occasional farmhan. The American pastime was our pastime.
Now we played a game called five dollars. One person
(05:29):
with bat balls to the rest of us positioned all
around the yard, either by himself or if we had
plenty of folks, someone would pitch. Every fly ball you
caught was worth a dollar. Every groundball you caught was
worth fifty cents. And when your total catch is added
up to exactly five dollars, it was your turn to
(05:50):
bat make an air filled and a grounder or a
fly ball, and you'd lose the value of whatever ball
that was. Now another game we played with it's called
flies and skinners. That was basically scored the same way.
Once you caught the predetermined amount of each, it was
your turn to back and we spent hours and hours
playing each in our three acre front yard. It took
(06:13):
forever to mow it, but when we finished it, man,
it was quite the ballpark. Breaks would come and we
drank from the hose, or someone would have a watermelon busted,
and we'd go through one of them like grass goes
through a goose. It wouldn't last long. Then back to
the game. Baseball to us was just a natural part
(06:34):
of summer. It could be too hot to fish, and
by that I mean it could be too hot for
the fish to bite. But it was never too hot
to play baseball, never, regardless of the time of day.
They say you can always go home when you can't
go anywhere else. Well, for us, when you couldn't do
anything else outside, you could always play baseball. Being inside
(06:57):
was not an option. There were three channels on the TV,
and unless you like soap operas or sesime street, outside
was where the fun took place, no matter of the temperature.
I've told the story before, but I accentuated a different
part of it, And for those who haven't heard it,
I'm going to tell it again, and I'm going to
give you the reader's digest version of it. And it's
(07:18):
a good story. I like to hear it myself. But
after a hot summer day of playing baseball in the
front yard, we took a break to go inside any dinner,
which is what the rest of humanity calls lunch, except
for a few of us die hard traditions. Anyway, my
brother Tim was a senior in high school, my brother
(07:39):
Chuck was a sophomore, and I was headed to the
sixth grade, all the chores had been done. It was
too hot for anything else but baseball. A metric ton
of fried bologna, sandwiches, potato chips, a kool aid later,
and the game was about to start. I was first
out the door, and there laid the bat, a thirty
two inch wood at a Rondack baseball bat made from
(08:02):
the finest white ash a Yankee tree farmer could grow.
The handle was thin and it fit my hands good,
even though it could have been a few inches shorter.
It was light and I could handle it well. And
I heard my brothers talking inside the house as I
stood on the porch, and they were arguing over whose
turn it was to bat. It was my turn, I
(08:26):
called it before we stopped to eat. They must not
have heard me. Oh they heard me, all right. They
just didn't care. But I cared, and I'd had enough
of them cheating me out of my turn. They could
run faster than me and would jump in front of
me when I was only a fly or a skinner
away from batting. Now they were gonna jyp me out
(08:48):
of starting off the afternoon session, so I decided to
kill the first one that walked out the door. Now,
not really, but I was just going to give them
a little wat four on top of the nogging with
that bat. When they stepped out on the porch. Mama
had an old milk churn sitting beside the front door
on the left side, and to compensate for them being
(09:11):
taller than me, I stood up on that churn and
I waited for the first one to step outside the door.
Didn't matter to me which one it was. They had
both dashed at my expense, and now it was time
to pay the fiddler. It sounded like a cartoon bunk
when the barrel of that bat made square contact with
the top of Ten's head. He staggered toward the edge
(09:35):
of the porch, trying not to lose his balance, and
during the three or four seconds he fought to stay conscious.
I realized then that I had chosen poorly. He caught
me before I made it in the loft of the barn.
I was wandering away from sanctuary and being able to
keep him beat away from the only access to the
loft until Mama got home. But I was not built
(09:57):
for speed, a malady that has haunted me all my life.
He had me squalling in very short ones now. That
sound and one other stand out to me as core
memories associated with baseball. Both of them attributed to the
(10:21):
crack of a bat. The other one was my first
home run. I don't know how many I hit in
the Little League. If you told me that the one
I'm going to tell you about now was the only one,
I couldn't argue with you, because that one shocked me
more than it did anyone else. I was batting clean up,
(10:42):
and Darryl Harvey, a classmate and childhood friend, was pitching
for the opposition, Merchants and Planners Bank. It was early
in the season and every team was scratching and clawing
to establish themselves as the ones to beat. I played
for Harvest Brothers, our dealership in town. Our uniforms were
(11:02):
green jerseys trimmed in white and yellow breeches with white
pinstripes that stopped just below the knee, and green baseball
stirrups worn over white socks. I wore number five, like
my favorite Major leaguer, George Brett of the Kansas City Royals.
The count was two and two, and I had looked
at four pitches and never took the bat off my shoulder.
(11:27):
I looked at the first base coach, mister Mike Meedy,
and he looked back at me as if to say,
why are you toting that bat if you ain't gonna
swing it. I checked third base and mister Pat Vallentine
was looking at me the same way. Time to go
to work. Brand Darrell started his wind up and groove
a fastball right down the middle of the plate. They
(11:49):
looked as big as a pone of corn bread. I
sent it over the fence and left center with the
easiest swing I've ever taken. It was almost effortless, and
the sound of that ball leaving that wooden was pure
and unmistakable. Nothing else sounds like it, and when you
hear it, you know it right away. Ted Williams, arguably
(12:12):
one of the greatest hitters of all times, said the
hardest thing to do in baseball is to hit a
round baseball with a round bat squarely. I'd say that's right,
considering that if you do that three times out of
ten over the course of your professional career, you go
to the Hall of Fame. I looked up at mister
Meadie as I touched first base during my victory lab
(12:35):
and I remember him smiling and pat me on the
back and saying, slow down, son, they can't get you out.
Hitting home runs was easy. I decided, right then, I
do that every time. I had three more bats during
that beatdown of merchants and planters, and Daryl struck me
out all three times. Hitting homers wasn't as easy as
(12:58):
I thought. Another front yard baseball session that summer was
interrupted when our brother Chuck walked out on the porch
to tell Tim and I that Elvis died. It was
August sixteenth, nineteen seventy seven. I remember what Chuck was
wearing when he walked out on the porch to tell us.
(13:19):
I can see it as plain as day. It's funny
the things you remember that are associated with historic events.
Baseball has been intertwined with reural life as much more
than any other sport, The threads of each woven in
the fabric of Americana that remained as true today as
they did back then. Bats for kids are aluminum now,
(13:41):
with teams having multiple uniforms, and batting gloves and sliding
gloves and fielding gloves and pitching gloves, and games played
on turf painted to look like dirt with removable mouths
to accommodate different levels of baseball. The constant throughout is
the baseball itself, nine to nine and a quarter inches
(14:02):
in circumference and await between five and five in the
quarter ounces. Now, we watched kids from all over the
country play ball in the impressive Florida heat, and I
was reminded immediately of how hot it was when we
played it home, and how, just like me back then,
they didn't seem to notice it much. Teammates, friends, coaches, umpires, family,
(14:25):
people of all ages gathered to watch a game, a
game played by children who some grown ups expected to
perform like adults, and when they didn't, those grown ups
acted like children. Now there wasn't much of it. In fact,
there was very little, but we all know it happens.
(14:46):
Our boys played well, They tried hard, and they battled
back after two initial losses, and they finished well. They
didn't win the series, but they didn't finish last either,
And had they lost every game but tried and above
all else to win, you'd have to count that as
a success as well. What will it matter ten years
(15:07):
from now? It won't. They'll always remember that experience, but
they'll remember in detail how hard they tried, or if
they didn't. I vaguely remember the sight of that first
home run boss settling over that fence in nineteen seventy seven,
but I remember vividly walking back to the dugout with
(15:28):
my friends, cheering and laughing and celebrating together. It was
an individual achievement that stands in the shadow of a
team celebration. And whether you're playing for Harvests Brothers Little
League team and Warren Arkansas where the Kansas City rolls,
it doesn't matter because so your breeches can be above
your knee or down around jangles. You can swing a
(15:50):
metal bat or one made from wood. You can play
under the lights or under the sun. But at every
level you have to hit, throw, and catch the three
elements of baseball. Everything else it's just extra. That's how
kids can gather in any space where, in anything, with
(16:11):
nothing other than a stick and a ball and have fun.
It really is. That's simple. Food, shelter, and clothing are
the three basic necessities of life. We add things to
it to make it more enjoyable, exciting, rewarding, or comfortable,
whatever adjective you want to use for every desired amenity,
(16:33):
the same holds true for baseball, signs for hitting, signs
for stealing, signs for pitching, shifting the outfield, shifting the infield,
lefties versus rightings, and all the analytics that go into
the game. Now, the game can theoretically go on forever.
Like life, you're not exactly sure when it will end.
(16:55):
That's the allure for me in The main similarity I
see in each of them is life like baseball is
about and join the game. It can be in the
front yard of a country home, an empty lot in town,
a little league field at the YMC eight, or the
finest manicured field in the Major leagues. Baseball is a
(17:16):
game that mirrors the ebb and flow of life metaphor
for patience and practice, skill of being able to hit
Whateff's thrown at you, and life has some nasty curveballs.
I thank y'all so much for listening to us here
on the Beargers Channel. Be claying, old Lake Pickle, work
(17:37):
hard to bring you the best content that we can.
Just subscribe to the channel and rip the knob off
all right. Before I get out of here, I gotta
give you some news. July the eighteenth, This country life
hats are hitting the website. You'll be able to get
them there. Check them out. They're really cool. I'm really
proud of how they looked. Going to be great. So
(18:00):
until next week, This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all
be shut
Host
Clay Newcomb
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