It was one of those beautiful summer days when a man’s fancy would turn to baseball. A bunch of us boys would get together with the intents of committing baseball. The problem was that there were seldom enough of us to form two teams. There is a comfort in having enough players to go around. Always remember that a poor right fielder is better than no right fielder at all. So we would stand around in the pasture that was our ballfield and listen to one of the group who thought himself witty, say, &uot;Who wants to eat a cow pie?&uot;

Clever remarks like that would spur us into action. We would play 500. We had a baseball bat &045; sort of. It was made of wood of an unknown variety and had been broken a number of times throughout its long lifetime. Each time it broke, we would drive a nail into its new wound and then wrap it with all the tape needed to make it look good. The bat had more nails than a hardware store. Then we would take a large bone and rub it up and down on the poor old bat. The bone took out the slivers and gave the bat the toughness and resolve required to play with us.

Our baseballs were in no better shape than the bat. Most of them had been wrapped with tape to keep their insides from being on the outside.

Someone, usually the owner of the bat, would be designated the batter. The rest of us would take the field or pasture, depending upon your perspective. Any cows that were grazing in the pasture were quickly asked to leave. Each player in the field was wearing a glove. The gloves varied from the antique to the rag variety.

A potholder would have had more padding than the combined lot of leather we wore.

Each boy would bring his dog with him. I would never put my glove on the ground after the time the neighbor’s dog urinated on it.

The batter would throw one of the balls up into the air and then take a swing at it. There were no penalties for swinging and missing other than the groans and catcalls from the players in the pasture. The bat wasn’t quite up to making that delightful &uot;thwaak&uot; sound of bat meeting ball, but it did the best impersonation that it could. The ball flew towards the guys in the field who all scrambled to catch the horsehide. The dogs would attempt to get out of our way. We would shag the flies like frogs.

Catching the ball gave each player points. Every fielder kept a running total. It was all on the honor system. The honor system is just another way of saying that there were a lot of arguments. If the ball was caught on the fly, it was worth 100 points. If it was snagged after the first hop, it was 75 points. After the second bounce, it was worth 50 points and after the third bounce, it was 25 points. If it was picked up after it stopped rolling, no points were awarded. Errors did cost you. If you dropped a fly ball, you lost 100 points. You could go far into the hole if you were a bad glovesman. The object was to get to 500 points.

The first person getting 500 points then switched places with the batter. We should have gotten extra points for stepping in a cow pie. We would spend hours playing this game.

If we had about enough players for one team, we could play work-up. In this game, the batter tries to stay at bat for as long as he can without making an out. When he made an out, he went to right field and the catcher became the new batter. All the other players would switch one position closer to becoming the batter.

If there were just a couple of us, we would take turns throwing a lively, rubber ball against the concrete steps of a house. The team (often a team of one) would try to catch the ball before it hit the ground. One bounce would be a single, two bounces a double, three bounces a triple and four bounces a home run.

We never stopped playing because we were tired. We stopped because a parent told us to stop.

We would play these games while pretending to be Major League Baseball players. We didn’t have to pretend to have fun.

(Hartland resident Al Batt’s columns appear Wednesdays and Sundays in the Tribune.)