From: V. Rahul Chandra (vrccan_at_gmail.com)
Date: Mon Apr 02 2007 - 02:52:10 PDT
=========== “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” Con’t from Bethany’s Untitled Post =========== Location: EARTH (St. Paul, Minnesota, United States of America) Stardate: 2422 [2.7] 0402.0425 Scene: Baseball Diamond “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Daniel muttered to himself as he shook his head and stared at the glove on his hand as if it were to blame for the mess he’d gotten himself into. Marty chuckled. “You’re overreacting,” he declared. Daniel turned to glare at his brother. “Marty, I haven’t thrown a pitch in over a year,” he complained. “At best I’m going to get knocked all around the park and at worst I’m going to hurt my arm!” “Nonsense,” Marty replied with a wave of dismissal. “We’ve still got twelve hours before the game starts. We’ll get you a nice, good long workout now with the ball and your arm will be nice and loose come game time.” Daniel rolled his eyes irritably. “Fine,” he said. “But don’t expect anything brilliant.” Marty laughed. “You’re almost 30, I think that was already in the cards,” he teased before jogging down to the plate and tossing the ball at Daniel once he’d reached that position. “Okay, let’s start things out slow,” Marty said, perching his catcher’s mask on top of his head but declining to bring it fully down to protect his face. “Just lob it back and forth a bit and we’ll let the arm get loose.” =========== Time Index: 30 minutes later “Okay, I think that’s enough of a warm up,” Daniel said, flexing the muscles on his right arm as he used the glove on his left to catch a toss from his brother. “Alright,” Marty said, pulling his mask down to cover his face and getting down into a catcher’s squat behind the plate. “Let’s start with a bunch of fastballs and take it from there.” Daniel nodded at him before getting set. He went into his full windup for the first time, pumped and hurled the ball in towards his brother. Marty had to stretch far out of the strike zone to catch it and threw it back to his brother with a few words of encouragement. Daniel sighed and went through the motions again this time able to get it quite a bit closer to the plate. “See, already making progress!” Marty called as he threw the ball back to Daniel. “Maybe you should try a few throws from the stretch instead.” “Sounds like a plan,” Daniel agreed, going into the stance he used when runners were on base and he needed to deliver the ball faster in order to prevent them from stealing bases on him. A few throws from the stretch position and he started to get into a nice rhythm. After about fifteen minutes of throwing he was regularly locating pitches across the plate. “Great work bro!” Marty called happily. “Now let’s see how your off-speed stuff is doing…” ============ Time Index: Game Time The stands were half-filled with interested spectators; mostly families of the people that would be playing in the game. Daniel’s team was the home team for the day which meant that they would be batting last each inning and for this reason his fielders were already out in the field getting ready for game time. Introductions had been done by Marty and had been brief and to the point. Daniel walked out to the mound and saw Marty discussing something with the umpire and shook his head in wonderment. He remembered just a few years ago that he used to be that serious about baseball also and wondered if that was a sign that he really was beginning to get old. That thought was depressing and so he pushed it away as quickly as he could. “Alright folks that’s enough lazing about for now,” the umpire called in his gruffly commanding voice. “Play ball!” he called as he drew his mask down onto his face for protection and walked behind the plate. As the lead-off batter for the first team went through their final warm-up swings Marty quickly jogged out to the mound, placing the ball in his brother’s glove and grinning across at him. “You’ve got this no problem,” he said with a wink. “Your warm-up stuff was great.” “You really think so?” Daniel asked. “For not having thrown a pitch in a year? Hell yes!” Marty said, encouragingly patting his shoulder. “Just start with fastballs for now and once we get your location down we’ll throw in some variety.” After another few words of encouragement he turned around and jogged back to the plate, crouching down behind it as the first batter came up. He was a lefty and Daniel knew from Marty that the man was known more for his speed at running around the bases rather than his power. Marty made the signal for the fastball and then set a target up across the heart of the plate. Daniel nodded and went through his wind-up, throwing the ball directly towards the target that Marty had set up. The batter swung and the ball came right back to Daniel who managed to catch it off a bounce more through reflexes then to any conscious decision to do so on his part. He turned and threw the ball to first base in more than enough time to get the batter out. “Great throw Daniel!” Marty called encouragingly. Much to Daniel’s surprise he was able to get the other two batters out on pop flies with the next two pitches and after just throwing three fast balls was able to get his team back into the dugout to bat. “Overpowering pace!” Marty joked as the two of them walked into the dugout. Daniel rolled his eyes as he took a seat next to Marty on the bench, taking his glove out and tossing it beside him. “Still eight innings left,” he muttered as they both watched the first batter from their team step up to the plate. ============ NRPG: Just some good old fashioned fun. The baseball season started yesterday and my favourite team plays their first game today. Needless to say, I’m pretty excited! On another note, this may or may not be my last post for this R&R. I guess it depends on how long it goes and whether or not I end up writing something in response to another post that gets written sometime in the future. Things are getting pretty busy here at school so I won’t be doing my normal random posts about nothing for probably a couple of weeks. ========== V. Rahul Chandra <vrccan_at_gmail.com> Playing... Lieutenant Commander Jeffrey Gorman, MD Chief Medical Officer/2nd Officer GATEWAY STATION, GS-2 & Major Daniel Clarkson, MD Executive Officer - Marine Contingent USS PATRIOT, NCC 5781-A & Lieutenant Sevlock Junior ACT Instructor Starfleet Academy, EARTH -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 268.18.24/741 - Release Date: 31/03/2007 8:54 PM From HyperNews_at_youth.net
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