Bean Bag Baseball

There's not many retirement communities in our town. They're becoming more frequent as the explosive growth in our burg catches up with us...but our church has developed working relationships with several.

One of those is named Pinewood. Our church members put together a church service for their residents each week.

Well, they got in touch with our community minister and they sent word to us that they like to play this game called Bean Bag baseball...and they like to meet members of the younger generation, too. Maybe, if our church had a youth group, we could scare up some teenagers to play them during the holidays?

Then they threw down the gauntlet: "We've played several church youth groups and we've never lost."

So, we decide on a time & date and get teenagers to commit to an hour. It wasn't hard to field a team of 10 pretty quickly, and last night at 6:30PM the game was on.

Now, the game is fairly easy: You have bean bags that are like regular bean bags except they have fabric with laces on them to make them look authentic. You stand at home plate (in this case, duct tape) and throw them about 20 feet to a board that has holes with various baseball outcomes above them: singles, doubles, triples, home runs, outs, foul balls, etc. It's possible that it can land on the angled board without falling in a hole, and that's a strike.

Then, they actually have chairs for first, second and third, and they actually "run" the bases. So, if you got a single, you sat in the chair and moved along as the game went on.

This goes on for 7 innings. They were the home team.

We got 3 runs in the first. They got 3.
We got 5 runs in the 2nd. They got 3.
We got 5 runs in the 3rd, most of them on Sarah Drew's home run. I felt like we were finding our groove. And I was kinda starting to feel bad because our kids were pretty excited and it looked like we were pulling away. But they still took the lead at 13-12 after 3 innings.

In our part of the 4th, we got two runs, but had the lead.

And then it got ugly. For the CBC students, anyway.

They had the bases loaded and nobody out, and this nice lady named Dorothy got a home run. Their side of the room went crazy with high fives and little dances when the runners stepped on home plate...the whole bit.

We never recovered from Dorothy's big blow and it went downhill from there, and at the end of the game, we were throttled 26-14.

They're grandparents, though, and they gave the kids sodas and popcorn and visited with them afterward.

When I commented to the director of the retirement village that I was worried early on that our kids were getting a little too competitive, he replied, "That's nothing. Most of the time the residents are playing their children & grandchildren and both sides heckle and taunt and make noises when the other team is getting ready to throw. Nah, don't worry about it. This was pretty tame by comparison."

Yeah, we'll see about tame, buddy. Next time, the gloves are off...

...and they did invite us back for a next time, too.

It's high time somebody taught these folks a lesson if you ask me.