With this admission, Base Paths probably loses face among his faithful, but with the rain coming down and baseball hours away, he settled down at noon Saturday and watched some football. Thing is, he’s still not sure what he saw.
First, you have to know that Base Paths’ communications resources are as outdated as his choice of games. His TV is so old he has to pour kerosene into it to get it started, and it has no sound. Not to worry, he grew up in the silent-film era, considers sub-titles his second language and finds most of the announcers’ prattle to be downright idiotic. He watches games in golden silence.
But it might have been nice to be sure who was playing this game. One side, in the green, was “E. Michigan” in the sub-titles but the other, in blue, was called “Buffalo,” and that couldn’t possibly be true, as all their shirts said “New York.”
New York who? New York Tech? Doesn’t even have a team. Syracuse? Nah, not an orange in sight. And this bunch sure didn’t play like the teams we usually associate with Buffalo.
They ran. They passed. They made smart decisions, which is more than could be said for “E. Michigan,” which once had a chance to pin “New York” deep in its own territory, deferred, and watched “New York” run a kick back for a touchdown. They behaved themselves. One of them, in fact, was so eager to hand the ball to an official after a touchdown that he almost knocked the guy down.
At length, Base Paths figured out that “E. Michigan” stood for Easy Michigan, as this team seemed incapable of making a respectable hit until after the play was over. Late in the game, as if there were some sort of mercy rule prohibiting a 35-point margin of victory, all the blue-clad “New Yorkers” stood aside and let one of the Easy Michigans run for an easy touchdown.
At last it was over and the blue team had won 42-14. The players and coaches responded as if it were just all in a day’s work. But just who were these “New York” blues? Surely a team Buffalo would be proud to call its own.
Signal back to Base Paths via pollyndoug@hotmail.com
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