Giants and Titans and Sunday afternoon baseball
Sunday 23rd June 2024
Sunday 23rd June 2024 was just as weird and strange as any other day within our electrical simulated Matrix and so I headed south before returning north and all the while listening to Elbow’s tremendous 2011 album “Build a Rocket Boys!” amid wistful memories of seeing them perform this album live at the Echo Arena in Liverpool in a very different decade and a very different world from the upside down one we all endure today. We have open arms for lippy kids as the birds “are the keepers of our secret” and Jesus is a Rochdale Girl apparently and well, the night will always win as I hope you’ll agree and appreciate immediately below:
My destination south was the picturesque beauty that is “Bratch Locks” and what was once a staircase lock is now a set of three and due to the stupendous engineering feats of a long forgotten history, have been so for two centuries or more. I became acquainted with its beauty two summers ago and have either walked through it as I’ve gambolled and gallivanted my way north and south along the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal or made her enchanting features the beginning of a walk in a raging heatwave in 2022, a rainstorm in 2023 and even an ill-judged walk later the same year that I thought would never end, and probably still hasn’t. Who’s to know in this strangest of all possible worlds?
Heading north I couldn’t help but smile at the memory of the heatwave summer of 2022 and dangling my legs in the canal at “Bratch Locks” as I poured my heart out to a young Irishman by the name of Ruairi (Rory). The Man wanted money, not Ruairi, “The Man”, and I wasn’t prepared to give those dirty stinking sots the satisfaction. I was a vaudevillian vagabond ensnared in a trap of someone else’s making I declared to my new Irish friend on the telephone. I was an innocent man, guilty of nothing more than cooling my feet in a canal in the middle of a heatwave and waving to the pleasure boaters passing merrily on by. I couldn’t and wouldn’t understand their reasoning I opined. You must help me stick it to the man I probably didn’t say but which in retrospect I probably should. Who knows eh, or dares to dream?
Despite his allegiance to Arsenal Football Club I believe Ruairi to be one of life’s good guys and wherever and whenever he is in our simulated Matrix of doom I hope he’s prospering. I had a feeling about Ruairi during our innumerable telephone conversations that my Mum would have liked this straight talking Irishman, right up to the point she found out he supported Arsenal but no matter, she would have liked him and that’ll do for me. My Mum sure was a harsh but fine judge of character even if she would have mocked him mercilessly for his choice of football team!
Oh the heatwave summer of 2022! The resting of weary legs in the canal. The strange case of always meeting men named Paul. The cheery waves from pleasure seekers rolling along the canal of life, their life, and in exactly the way they were determined to live it. The waterfalls in Wales. The days when everything possible went impossibly wrong yet ended up by being improbably right. Getting lost on a canal. Hitchhiking aboard a narrow boat and crossing a self-titled “Stream in the Sky” 120 feet in the clouds. With a stranger named Paul. On a day when everything went south, yet I ended up heading triumphantly north.
Where this rambling musing is heading now is anyone’s guess, so shall we head to Ironbridge for “America’s Pastime” and some Sunday afternoon baseball down by the riverside?
My spiritual home and toy town of Ironbridge was her usually busy Sunday self with tourists flocking to stare in awe at the oldest iron bridge in the world and quite frankly and based only upon the image immediately above, can you blame them? Jeremy was back in place at the town’s one and only “Old Fashioned Sweet Shop” and after purchasing some mint toffees I made the mile stroll along the riverside to neighbouring Coalbrookdale and the Meadow Recreation Ground for the old fashioned American tussle between bat and ball, pitcher and hitter, slugger and the slugged! I arrived at the top of the 3rd inning and after rather upsetting a couple of visiting supporters from Stourbridge by stating my home team heroes were utterly dreadful, they sheepishly confirmed that they were equally as bad and today, already trailing by 4 runs to 1. The 4th inning came and went in the blur of a couple of star pitchers for each team, and a run for each team via the stealing of home plate by the visiting “Titans” of Stourbridge and a run scoring double for the home team “Giants” of Telford. A score-less 5th inning saw my departure from whence I came as I had an urgent appointment with some fish and chips and a chat with a grand old lady before retreating home for some cricket, football and of course, Sunday night baseball.
Postscript
As at the time of writing the final score has yet to be updated to the Telford Giants or West Midlands Baseball League websites so I’m going for a 10–5 win for the home team Giants. This fictitious result gives my hometown boys a seasonal record so far of 2 wins and 3 losses and that’s bad news for bears of any colour. Giants even. The Titans defeat sends them ever further into a losing spiral with a hat-trick of defeats on the spin since they vanquished the Birmingham “Bats” 10–9 on opening day. Their seasonal record of 1–3 sees today’s visitors from Stourbridge a place below their Telford hosts and yet quixotically both teams are a hanging curve ball crashed into the River Severn from the hapless Bats of Birmingham who have a 0–5 record and will surely prop up the West Division of the West Midlands Baseball League all summer long.
Next up for my hometown Giants are the “Sorcerers” from Worcester on 7th July and I’ll be sure to update you on today’s score when I attend their next fixture early next month.
Or maybe I won’t.
Who knows?
Time will tell.
It always does.
Until then, this has been Stephen Blackford for “Baseball News” on the banks of the River Severn in beautiful Ironbridge.
Back to you in the studio.
Thanks for reading. Here are my literary pride and joy and they’re all available via Amazon if you’re in a book buying kind of mood.
Peace.
