Bits & Pieces

 

By Kim J. Harmon

Someone – OUCH! – is trying to tell me something and one of these days – OUCH! – I just may listen – OUCH! – because, if this continues – OUCH! – I’m afraid of what else I may run into – OUCH!

The message may be as simple as KEEP YOUR BALL IN THE FAIRWAY but it may be little more encompassing, like PUT YOUR GOLF BAG IN THE GARAGE AND FORGET THAT THE SCOTTISH PEOPLE EVER INVENTED THIS STUPID GAME.

Seven years ago, I made a trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina . . . the Mecca of golf. I had won a week at my uncle’s condo when I chipped a golf ball into a small wading pool during our family barbecue the summer before. So I went down there with my family, my mother, and my two brothers with the idea of enjoying the beach a little and playing some golf.

We played three rounds. It was during the third round, I think, when I knocked my ball short and wide of the green on one particular hole. The ball had come to rest near a tree, but I still had a clear shot at the green.

Well, I wandered into a nest of fire ants – which were, as you can imagine, quite perturbed that someone wanted to destroy their colony just to chip a ball onto the green. And believe me, they don’t call ‘em fire ants for nothing. Man, the BURNING. It was like the worst sunburn you can imagine just starting around my ankles (silly me, no socks that day) and just radiating up my entire leg.

I should have given up then. I would have saved myself an untold amount of money and saved the lives of hundreds of golf balls which have found their eternal rest at the bottom of some lake somewhere.

I limped on for a little while – another year or two.

Then I retired, limiting myself to just one or two rounds a season (family gatherings or benefit golf tournaments – stuff like that). But like Michael Jordan and Sugar Ray Robinson, I didn’t know when to quit and, thus, I came out of retirement this summer.

That someone (either Saint Sebastian, the patron saint of athletes, or Saint Felix, the patron saint of insect bites) tried to send me another message on Sunday. Out for my usual round with my two brothers, I made the mistake (for the umpteenth time, mind you) of dropping my tee shot on the sixth hole at Patton Brook Country Club into the sand trap that braces the green all along the front. The stinkin’ hole is only 100 yards long and I still do this all the time, no matter what club I use. I could take out my driver and, I swear, I would still put my ball into the trap.

Anyway, I was stuck in the left corner of the trap, facing a high lip with almost no room for my follow through. So I took a couple of practice swings just to see what would happen on my follow through and what would happen is that I would be striking the underside of the turf with my golf club.

I did it three times.

The third time was the one that did it. The nest of yellow jackets about three or four feet away, stuck right there under the turf, got EXTREMELY angry at me and before I could even shank my bunker shot (which almost certainly would have happened, anyway) I was attacked.

Five times.

Five stings.

It would be almost funny if it didn’t hurt so bad (but it WAS funny when my brother, who thought I was doing a reprise of my fire ant jig, came over to see what was the matter and got stung four times himself).

A moment later, trying to clutch my ear and my arm and my calf all at the same time, I found out my golf club was still in the bunker. I honestly thought of leaving it there, but instead I took one step, reached down, and . . . got stung again, right on the back of my knee.

Oh, we got back at those bees, though. After putting out on the seventh green, we ran into the clubhouse to get some ice and told the manager about the nest. About five minutes later the nest was gassed into insect heaven.

So, there – nyah, nyah, nyah.

Will amazements never cease? After looking so unbeatable in capturing their third consecutive Cal Ripken state championship, the Newtown Babe Ruth 12-year-old All Stars go out quietly and quickly in the New England Regional Tournament – and lost to Danbury, a team the All Stars had hammered twice the week before. Hey, no one said a team could be at the top of its game ALL the time and the All Stars had had such a wonderful summer already. No big deal . . . and then there is the Newtown 10-and-under traveling softball team, which went to their New England Regionals in Johnston, Rhode Island,  and came home with a championship. WOW! And to think that these girls have four more years of travel softball before most of them even reach high school . . . a little over three weeks from now, Newtown High School – coming off a 9-1 season in which it went to the CIAC Class L state semi-finals – will be starting practices for 2001. And that means about four weeks from now the New York Giants will begin defense of their NFC championship. Gosh, I’m all a tingle . . . I_would really like to know what it is about all this UNWRITTEN_RULES_junk in baseball. You can’t bunt to break up a no-hitter - not even if you’re still in the game?_You can’t swing on a 3-0 pitch if your up by 10?_You can’t steal when your team is down by seven?          Really, now, that stuff is just idiotic. It reminds me of when_Pete Rose had his 44-game hit streak stopped by Gene Garber and he complained, “the guy was pitching like it was the seventh game of the World Series.”_Well, what was he SUPPOSED to do - groove a pitch like Chan Ho Park did for Cal Ripken? It also reminds me of the guy who charged the mound after getting plunked with a pitch - even though the pitcher (wasn’t it Pedro Martinez?) was throwing a perfect game and had NO_REASON or DESIRE_to hit the guy. Sometimes baseball is just plain dumb.