zodiac20 Nov 2004

I'm reminded of how once, during a baseball practice with the old Milwaukee Blacks (all Negroes, except me), a young woman snuck onto the field, rubbed herself all over with faeces, and proceded to run around the bases, furiously dry-humping anyone unimaginative enough to stay in his position (ie, most of the team, as they were all Negroes.)

"What are you doing?" I asked, when she'd finally tired out enough to listen.

"I'm playing baseball," she answered.

"No you're not," I said. "Baseball is played with a stick and a ball. We're playing baseball."

"That's not my understanding of baseball. Mine is running around bases and faeces. What authority do you have to say your game is baseball and mine isn't?" she said, surprisingly articulately, which made us think she'd probably picked up the phrase somewhere else.

"Well," I said. "We invented the game. We have umpires and coaches who tell us what is baseball and what isn't."

"I reject your umpires," she answered pertly. "Besides, umpires don't even play baseball. They just watch and comment. How are they to know what's baseball and what isn't? When I rub myself with faeces and run bases, I FEEL that I'm playing baseball. What have your umpires got to compare with that?"

"They INVENTED the game!" I shouted, getting a little exasperated. "The definition of baseball is 'A sport played with sticks and balls and approved by umpires'!"

"Poot!" she said. "Rules! Correctness! No one would have any fun playing your baseball, adhering to rules and logic and authorities! The fun is all that matters to me!"

"Look," I said, lowering my voice a little (for the Negroes were getting a little frightened, in that way Negroes do sometimes), "Baseball is one of the most popular sports in the world. Tons of people have fun playing it, rules and all. Now, Lord knows you can play whatever kind of game you want. But why don't you just call it something other than baseball? And try not playing it on a BASEBALL field?"

"I WANT it to be baseball!" she answered. "No, I don't know where I got the idea that it was baseball. I was just rubbing myself with faeces one day when the word just came to me: Baseball."

We could tell she was getting worked up again, her faeces-caked eyes kind of aglow with a weird stupid light. And sure enough, she started chasing the players again until we were forced the abandon the field. And that was the end of the Negro League in Milwaukee. The end.