Chet The Dog

Posts Tagged ‘baseball’

Baseball’s Back!

And baseball’s important in Bark To The Future, the next Chet and Bernie novel (8/9, available for preorder). Bernie pitched for Chisholm High back in the day (high school also being important in this story). For example:

“The girls must have loved you,” she said.

“Huh? What girls?”

“The Chisholm girls, of course. They had a reputation back in the day.”

“Oh? Like what?”

“A reputation, Bernie,” Weatherly said. She ran her bare foot under the hem of his jeans. “Capisce?”

“Um,” said Bernie. “I, uh … well, in retrospect, maybe …” His voice got strangely thick and he came to a halt.

“Plus what with you being the big flamethrower and all, dot dot dot,” Weatherly said. She seemed to be having lots of fun all of a sudden, for reasons I didn’t know but felt quite nearby, possibly even in my eventual grasp. And that didn’t happen often! All of a sudden I was having lots of fun, too! Imagine that! Just lounging on the patio and doing zip could be a tip top experience.

“Flamethrower?” said Bernie.

“Up there on the mound,” Weatherly went on. Then came a long pause, “mound” somehow staying around for a bit. “Dishing out the heat,” she added after a while. “What did you like better? A windup or pitching out of the stretch?”

“Stop,” Bernie said.

“Stop?” Weatherly’s eyes, deep and dark, opened wide. “Stop what? Stop with the inside baseball?”

Bernie laughed. Weatherly joined in. They laughed together, laughed and laughed. It turned into a kind of music. I came very close to prancing around before the laughter died out.

Baseball’s Back! Sort Of!

How are we feeling about all those empty seats?

Last Night

My dad, Ed Abrahams, 95, WW2 vet (USN) threw out the first pitch at last night’s Rays/Red Sox game in Port Charlotte. (I went down in the afternoon to warm him up.) Here he is showing some incredulous Rays his high school glove, a Luke Appling model bought in 1941. “You caught with that?”one said.

World Series Game 7!

That doesn’t happen every day. Here’s a bit of baseball from Heart of Barkness, the latest Chet and Bernie (a series which can be read in any order!).

A man in a cowboy hat stood behind the bar, his back to us, watching baseball on a tiny TV, no sound. Too bad: baseball sounds great, and the crack of bat on ball is off the charts.

“What’s the score?” Bernie said.

“Diamondbacks two, Dodgers one,” the man said, and turned to us. He had skin that reminded me of old leather and a huge, pure white mustache that curled way up on both cheeks. His hair was also pure white, and reached his shoulders. What else? He wore a red shirt and a bolo tie. In short, there was lots to look at this with this guy, all good.

“You’re a fan?” he said.

“Love the game,” Bernie said.

“They say it’s too slow.”

“I know.”

“But – “ The old man wagged his finger, twisted and bent. Right away, my tail got a funny feeling, like always when finger-wagging starts up. “ – they’re wrong,” he went on. “Everything else is too fast. You follow?”

“I do,” Bernie said.