Those Darn Bad-Luck Bowls

There are some baseball fields we just call “bowls” because they are situated at the bottom of a park ringed with banks of grass where fans could sit and watch the action from most of the sides of the field. For the longest time, the Pittsville “bowl” was our perennial nemesis, almost always knocking the Royals out of the postseason playoffs—while exhibiting highly vocal, annoying behavior from their dugout.

Somehow conferences and possibly divisions have realigned in recent years. So this season, after soundly defeating Gresham in round one of Regionals, we headed to Iola-Scandinavia. My old stomping grounds if you recall me blogging about our 100-mile round trip to work for a dozen years.

As someone with certain sports superstitions, I immediately recognized the similar “bowl” setup to P-town. That was unnerving right away.

But the game was so close. Not a runaway score by either team. We were ahead by 2 then the Thunderbirds caught up. Then we’d make a mini-surge, but they’d catch up. It came down to the last batter for the home team. And they ended up defeating us 6-5 and knocking us out of the playoffs in what was one of our better season record years of late.

For me, though, the fun was running into some of my “Iola people”!

I left the publishing house some 10 years ago now. But Cori the ticket taker who worked at the Fitness Center there remembered me!

Then I ran into Miss Mandy, one of Carter’s first daycare people in Iola. And her mother, Judy, who worked with Jim and I at Krause. Just great to get long overdue (though you didn’t realize they were overdue) hugs!

Of course I then had to check out some of our favorite haunts…

Including Carter’s favorite ice cream place Shivers. Per usual, a long summer line.

Then I took the route home through Scandinavia, which always seems like I just earned another stamp on my passport. If only! Still, all was a great reminder of how we can forge great bonds in the workplace when we work in a friendly community and we, by nature, are friendly too.

Side note: I absolutely do not miss that commute.

Side note 2: Thank you, seniors! What a great season!