Coach Mickey Brown’s demeanor took a severe hit from knowing that reporters, no correct that, a reporter from the small local paper was starting to ask questions as to the origins of his players. ALL of his players. Normally the question popped up from time to time and was to be expected about a single player every once in a while but never the entire team. Of course it’s not every day an entire team suddenly materializes out of thin air. Not only that but their level of play is so perfect it leads one to think, as stupid as it sounds, that these guys were created just to play baseball.

Mickey knew he should have expected this moment and now that it had arrived it was going to take some creativity to make sure the moment didn’t settle down and develop roots.

Towards that effort he was in his office with a full cooler of ice waiting for Trent to show up and add the beer. His imagination needed fuel.

As if Trent was taking direction from or paying attention to the narrator of this story, he walked in bearing beer.

Mickey could see their problems melting away already. Anyone else would be pulling out a thesaurus and searching for the many forms of the word “denial”.

After the beer was laying snug under a few inches of ice and the promise of a couple frosty ones lay in the not so distant future both men took on the pose of men doing serious thinking. Anyone else would have seen two men staring out into space with a look on their faces that said.
“The last time I saw my car keys they were….”

“What were the exact words the reporter used,” asked Coach Brown.
“He wanted to know the teams point of origin.”
He said the words “point of origin?”
Yes he said “point of origin.”
“Who says things like that?”

“Reporters for small town newspapers apparently,” replied Coach Stotlmeyer. At that moment in time both men crossed their arms in a gesture that said “This could take awhile…”.

To Be Continued…