The Incinerator Homerun

We were playing kickball the other day, me, a few volunteers, a few kids from the school and three of the Moynihan kids and their mom. We played out on the soccer field which is this kind of wild, partially overgrown and partially dusty field with a few interesting features. You thought the Bowman wiffle ball house rules were weird, but these ground rules were nuts. The field is walled by ten foot walls with broken glass on top. On two and a half of the four sides, the other side of the wall is still within school property, but the other walls are shared with neighbors. So …. If you kick a ball over the back wall into the LCS playground, that’s a legit homerun. But, if you kick a ball that is technically still fair, but over the left or right hand wall into the neighbors’ yards, your team loses a point because really, you may never see that ball again. If you kick it onto the pile of cut grass and yard waste in the back of the field, the fielders have to climb the pile to go get the ball and you get to run the bases. If you kick it into the compost pit or the incinerator that may or may not be presently on fire burning trash …. That may be ruled a ground rule double. If the incinerator is not actually burning at the moment, then the fielder has to get the ball out of the trash pile. That’s not fun. Now in our game we had a few legit homeruns, one incinerator homerun and then, alas, someone kicked the ball into a neighbor’s yard. We all walked toward the 10 foot wall, not really ever expecting we’d see it again. It was kind of like that scene in the Sandlot when they just accept that they’ll never see their baseball again. When suddenly … without a word …. Some mystery person on the other side tossed it back to us! It was a Christmas miracle.