RUBBERY SHRUBBERY Post 59
This is the Rubbery Shrubbery blog, where you’ve been learning how Yachats (YAH-hots), Oregon, acquires a Major League Baseball franchise. To learn more about Yachats and its inhabitants—called Yachatians (yah-HAY-shuns)— please go to this page or go to GoYachats.
Yachatians (and Waldportinos) have been gathering at Rubbery Shrubbery Stadium each Saturday to participate in quasi-baseball activity. You might snicker, but this is how baseball got its start, maybe.
The Thrill of Bat Taking Aim at Ball in Yachats
by the Rubbery Shrubbery staff
Brimming with enthusiasm, ungifted players by the dozen take to the field on Saturday afternoons to bring a bat/ball game similar to baseball back to the central Oregon coast. Here we see a gallimaufry of ages, genders, sizes, and visual acuities, but all with an eagerness bordering on fanaticism. It makes one proud.
And this prideful stuff has been going on for five weeks now. Yachats is fascinated by this show of bravery in defiance of the risks, this laughing at impending injury and loss of dignity. As one unidentifiable Yachatian put it, “It’s like watching NASCAR. I know all the wheels are going to come off, but I can’t resist looking.”
To this point, no bats, glasses, or noses have been broken, and only three balls have been eaten by the blackberry bushes (see Fig. 1) that crouch in anticipation at the edge of the grass in the outfield.
Figure 1. Berries on a baseballivorous blackberry bush.*
If you happen to be in downtown Yachats on a Saturday afternoon around 2:30 p.m., you might drop by Rubbery Shrubbery Stadium where you can borrow a glove and be immediately inserted into a batting order. There’s no warmer welcome than that anywhere.
* Photo by G. King in Bright, Victoria, Australia.
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