We gonna celebrate and have a good time...

With as much time as I spent on a baseball field growing up, you'd think I'd be more "sporty" than I am...I guess all I was really interested in was the food and the free rides.

Yea, that sounds about right.

My father was the team coach for a youth baseball league, I was the mascot. Or so I thought.

Weekend after weekend I'd stalk the dugout, poke a stick around in the dirt, or eat snow cones in the grass as my father screamed, spit, cursed, cheered and cursed some more. In between his rants I'd find a way to beg for snack bar money, maybe some nachos, a soda, candy. That was my pleasure.

I knew it was going to be a pizza night if I heard those few words blaring from the dugout after a win...

There’s a party goin' on right here...
a celebration...

...and that meant two things.

Mainly it meant that we would be going to Round Table for a victory pizza party with the team.

It also meant that I, as innocent as they thought I was, would get penny after penny after penny inserted into the coin operated pony ride, or as I probably called it "Brown Thunder", all because I was a cute little girl with nothing else to do but ride the pony.

I knew that if I sat atop that pony, one of them boys would insert a penny and away I'd go, on top of ole Brown Thunder, galloping away into the sunset.