Early Season Sounds

KACHING

The box office opens and the money starts rolling in for the millionaire ballplayers and the billionaire team owners.

WHOOSH

The first pitch of the year flies through the air. Fast ball 98 Mph.

WAAP

The batter takes the first pitch and it slams into the catchers mitt.

The pitcher delivers the second pitch, another fastball this one 99 Mph.

KEEERAKK

The batter makes contact and drives the ball deep into left field at 140 mph.. The left fielder goes back, back, back.

CROONCH

His spikes scrape the warning track. Back back back to the wall THWAP he jumps up, hits the wall, reaches into the stands

The sell out home crowd screams of 47,000 scream as one....NOOOO.

The ball is headed directly towards an eleven year old boy in the stands who has brought his glove to the game. His heart is beating out of his chest BABUMPBABUMP.

The left fielder extends his body as far as it can go. At the top of his leap, the ball falls into his glove KLPKK.

One out.

First batter of the season.

How did we arrive at such a situation?

How can these guys possibly be making this kind of money?

Let's break it down.

The guy at the plate represents the guy with the club. Ever since the first ape looked at the first monolith and picked up the first stick, all relatives of that first ape grabbed a huge evolutionary advantage over their simian brethren. They learned to take their club and BONKSH, another competitor out of the way. They continued with this advantage for thousands of years. It is the beginning of humanity. 

The country was dominated by the guys with clubs. Today that has become known as country clubs.

Finally that advantage was surrendered to the simians who took the concept one step further. They learned how to throw, at first just rocks but eventually somebody got the idea of re-engineering a stick and instead of holding it, throwing it after sharpening it to a point. The first simian superstar was shocked when before he could get anywhere near clubbing distance discovered a stick passing through his face SHHHHNOOK.

The simian with the spear no longer had to get within clubbing distance of animals higher on the food chain to get them the hell out of here. He could throw his stick at them and avoid the disfiguring maulings that so many of his club bearing relatives had suffered as well as the out and out devouring that the non club carrying simians helplessly suffered at a pathertic level.

Thus, people who could throw took their giant step in the evoloutionary competition.

Over the thousands, millions of years of survival and improvement, we are still enthralled by our fellow contemporary humans who have the ability to throw as well as the ability to club.

And how did we make it this far, those of us wo couldn't throw or club? We learned to run. We ran our asses of while the guys with the clubs stood there and the guys with the spears shot and fetched and the kid with the slingshot didn't hurt any either while the rest of us were all running our asses off. The fastest runners also gained an evoloutionary advantage.

The rest of us runners who didn't run fast enough or throw or club came to the conclusion that we would have to pay the swift, the clubbers and the throwers if they were going to protect us which we gladly did although the cost of that payment has been a source of friction forever.

Then somebody came up with a more civilized idea after bullets and bombs began to replace spears and clubs. Why don't we get these guys who are great with clubs and throwing and match them up against one another in a contest of some kind and charge people money to watch these evolutionary specimens try to throw an object past one another (rather than at or through) while the guy with the club tries to hit the object and then drop his club and run home.

We'll build stadiums where the less evolutionarily blessed can sit and watch clubbing and throwing and running.

And then television

And then

It's early in the season

First inning of the first nine inning game that will be played 162 times by 80 or so teams around the country with the top 30 teams having the most evoloutinary specimens getting paid the most money to compete with one another and not get crazy on the streets with their clubbing and throwing while assuring that heir great, great, great grandchildren will be wealthy even if they never pick up a stick.

Yeah, it's baseball season. The boys of summer are back.