It’s the rainy season here in the Black Hills. That time of year when you can hear the grass growing. The rainy season always corresponds with baseball season, which is in full swing for my son and me. Most baseball players don’t mind the occasional rainout easing its way into the schedule. You don’t get to play ball but you get to watch it rain, both a pleasure in their own right.

If you’ve been in a bit of a slump, an affliction no ballplayer is immune to, a rainout always seems to put the body and mind at ease and get you back on track or at least make the slump more tolerable. I’ve been playing baseball for over 35 years and what I used to consider a slump has become so common place that it’s pert near the new norm.

As of late I’ve been thinking that maybe I should hang up the cleats but I’d miss those rainouts too much. I thought I’d at least play until my glove broke so I’d have that for an excuse, as lame as it may be, but that old piece of cowhide won’t give up the ghost. Curse my parents for spending more than they could afford back in 1990 on a glove that any cow would be proud to give their life for.

That’s another reason I’ve been pondering putting the game to rest, there are 14 guys on the baseball team I play on and my glove is older than 12 of them. Why did these kids go and get so young? Maybe when my face begins to resemble my glove I’ll stop the madness and take up bocce ball, yard darts, or some other old fart shuffle and toss type game. Old fart shuffle and toss…and fart and wheeze and hack…would probably more accurate.

Speaking of yard darts I think we’re coming up on about the 30th anniversary of that fateful day my father permanently banished the game from our family. I’d like to say that the banishment was a result of being a sore loser in a tightly contested match but I can’t say that for a couple of reason. First, my dad’s not a sore loser, secondly he wasn’t present when the “incident” occurred.

It was one of those wrong-place-wrong-time type of incidents. Wrong place for my sister wrong time for me to prove to my brother that I could throw a yard dart higher than him, which, for those of you scoring at home, I did.

I gave it chuck and we, my brother and I, watched it arc high into the North Dakota breeze until gravity turned it’s very steal, very sharp tip down towards dad’s beautifully manicured lawn. Only this time it didn’t find dad’s lush green lawn on its downward flight. It found my sister who was, as usual, minding her own business while her two knucklehead brothers were demonstrating their stupidity, as usual.

She never saw it coming. I saw it coming, but hoped a knuckleheads hope that that North Dakota breeze would alter the yard darts flight just enough so that we could continue being knuckleheads. That wind never liked me much.

I found out right quick that head wounds bleed…a lot. It was hard to keep direct pressure on the wound while my sister ran screaming to the house. My brother, who’s a bit squeamish at the sight of blood, was no help.

So there was Jarvis, fainted away face down where the yard dart was supposed to have landed, and me running behind my sister with my finger in the divot repeating the mantra Amanda had heard numerous times before, “Don’t tell mom…don’t tell mom…” She didn’t have to tell. The grisly scene was pretty self-explanatory.

Dad got home from work, snapped each yard dart in two, said some words that would make a sailor blush and that was that…the end of my aspiring yard dart career.

Summer’s upon us…be careful out there and enjoy the rainouts…they keep the yard darts grounded.