The setting for the old ball field was beautiful because it was in the middle of the woods. There were trees surrounding the whole field and it became easy to forget that there was any civilization at all. The aesthetic was wasted on the boys, however, whether they were campers or counselors, because all that they wanted to do was to smack the tar out of the baseball. As with almost anything that has to do with boys, they wanted to show off how masculine they were and if they struck out while at the plate, or if the ball that they hit was a lob and easily caught, then it was a loss of honor for them. And being boys, they had to razz their friends if they made a mistake or struck out. The jeers began before the first pitch and the good natured jabs continued well after the game ended.
The problem with playing baseball is that it is incredibly fun if you are at bat or are pitching but for the rest of the players there is an awful lot of waiting around. The campers became bored instantly. If they were in the outfield then they would lose themselves by staring or the grass or by studying the woods to try and figure out if there were monsters or wildcats hiding in there. If their team was at bat then they would immediately forget the order in which they were on deck so the chiefs had to continually remind them of when they were supposed to go to the plate. When the team was on the offense then they had to line up behind the fence but the close proximity to each other meant that there were often arguments which sometimes led to pushing and even fists. Whoever invented baseball probably didn’t have preteens in mind when he came up with the rules.Some of the campers played club baseball at home and they were really good. The old ball field was not set up for professionals and the older campers often hit the ball into the woods that lined the field. If this happened then play would have to stop and the outfielders would fan out to find the ball. Sometimes this took awhile and members of both teams became restless. The counselors became the umpires during the baseball games and George, who was an umpire, came up with the idea that if a baseball was hit into the woods then it became an automatic out. This rule resulted in constant complaining by the semi-professional ball players but it was just camp ball and it was silly to take it too seriously.
Zolo usually had the oldest campers. It infuriated him when Danny didn’t take the game seriously. When he was the pitcher he would lob the ball or throw it wide right so that the older campers had a hard time hitting it. When Zolo complained, Danny would yell out, “Oh Waaa! You cry like a baby!” This only made Zolo angrier as he was filled with righteous indignation. The two chiefs would not talk to each other for days after playing a game together.
Danny also loved to get under the skin of the batter. When they complained about his lobbing the ball, Danny would simply reply with “tough titties!” The more they complained, the more they encouraged Danny. He openly taunted the batter by calling the a “booger eating, slack jawed, sloping forehead, knuckle dragging, moron.” The campers in Polk’s tribe could as old as fourteen or even fifteen and they didn’t like the trash talk of Danny. All that they wanted to do was to smack the ball into the woods, regardless of the penalty. Danny continued to lob the ball and when the campers complained he called them “turkey turds.” Certainly, this was not the way that the game was played back in Knoxville.
While Danny pitched, his whole tribe of sixteen campers played outfield. Not only did they have to deal with the boredom, the sweat bees where everywhere and they had to continually swat them away. Sometimes a camper would kick up his legs, fling his arms in the air, and let out a cry when he was bit. Danny was genuinely unsympathetic. “Pay attention you bunch of candies,” he yelled at them. The opponents were always “turkey turds” while his own team were always “candies.” Each time a new boy came to the plate, Danny turned to his tribe in the outfield and yell, “Sing it, chorus!” And all of the members of the Creek tribe would yell “Batter! Batter! Swing batter!” It was all great fun, except for Zolo who fumed in frustration, and Danny knew that when the campers went back to school in the fall they would call their friends “turkey turds” and “candies.”
Never one to miss the chance to make a dollar, Fr. Jubal Early sold ice cream bars to the campers as they walked past the refrigerator at the back of the mess hall on the way to the ball field. It didn’t matter if the campers ate it fast or slow because they always ended of with goo all over their hands before they even made it out to the field. They complained bitterly that they wanted to wash their hands but the nearest latrine was a long way off so they remained sticky. In a rare admission that he had made a mistake, Fr. Early stopped selling ice cream after his first two years as director.