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Quarterlings

If you were a horse in the Northern Hemisphere, which I assume you are not, your birthday would be on January 1.  If you were a horse, and thought about it for a long time, you might realize that some one-year-old horses were 1 day old, and some were 364 days old, but that both would celebrate their first birthday together.  They would be "yearlings".  And, in another year, they would compete against each other in a race for two-year-olds, for instance.

In the Southern Hemisphere, where they have chosen to have summer when the Other Half of the world has winter, horses have their birthdays on August 1.  That isn't exactly six months apart, but it is close enough for a horse.  Most horses never figure that out.

And that is why people who are not horses, but only partial horses, work so hard to get their kids into the first grade as soon as possible:  they love handicapping their colts and fillies.

The Tucson Old Timers--the Oldest Ball Club in the World, not because they have been playing baseball longer than anyone else, but because Floyd is 88, and everyone else is close behind, have their birthdays on one of four days a year.  Everyone born in October, November, or December, celebrates his birthday in November.  (You can figure it out:  January, February, and March celebrate in. . . .  Right:  you got it!)

It is an ambiguous celebration.  The kids who just turned sixty, and who were just admitted to the TOTs, try to stand tall and congratulate the elder TOTs, but they are really thinking about how the old guys cannot throw from deep short, anymore, and that they run like ducks with titanium and silicone hips.  The old guys are hopping up and down about a quarter of an inch, as happy as kids in a wading pool, because they are still able to subtract 1931 from 2013, in November or February or May or August.

Sixty or Eighty, they were yearlings together, and now they are lined up--half in Blue and half in White--to run the race that is set before them.

Before every game, they gather outside a shared dugout--because they were all yearlings, or quarterlings, together--to rehearse what they need to know together, and to hear how Art and Mal and the guys who had shoulder or elbow surgery are doing.

Baseball is all about teamwork; being together.


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