A long time ago, in a magical land far, far away, there existed a giant man. He was a man of strength and poise, and he wielded his kindling wood stick around the surrounding counties, ruling and captivating all with his tasks. There were rumors that once, when challenged by the ramifications of a great disaster, he was told by his enemies?The Pitchers of Padres, those foul devils?to send balls covered in a river deep into other fields. He did. He did it three times, just to prove his might to the land.
His domain was a field, by the greatest of oceans. Some?who didn’t know much, but might have known this?claimed he had an army of dogs, who fetched the balls he sent into the giant sea, so that he might do it again.
He was a true giant. He was captivating to all in the land.
Yet, there were some in the counties of his domain who did not approve of him. Some tried to bring down his reputation as a true leader. They were a loose band of rebels, known for their dirt-caked faces and mud-riddled toes. They dressed in tattered rags, grabbed large sticks from the forests and shoved them in the face of the giant hero, and if he dared respond, they went to their quills and wrote ill of him.
The giant was not nice, they said. Sure, he could captivate all the many lands. But he was not nice. There were rumours abound that one of his cohorts among the Stickwielders, a Kentian prince, once was voted by the rebels to be better than the giant hero. The hero, highly offended by the rebuff (despite claims to not care about the ragamuffins), would not congragulate the Kentian prince.
All the dirt-caked rapscallions wanted to bring him down.
It made you wonder, because this had happened before. Years in the past, there had been another giant, a mammoth, red-haired beast whose arms were rumored to be larger than most tree trunks in the land. He too wielded a stick, and he too caught the attention of all the people, in all the lands, by wielding his stick so adroitly. But the rebels with their quill pens?a loose band some call “Media”?never tried to bring down the giant of yore. Wherever he went, crowds gathered hours before the first ball was launched, and his mere presence illustrated many flash explosions throughout the fields and fences dotting the landscapes.
But no one ever wanted that carrot-topped behemoth to fall. No one ever wanted to expose him for a sham, for a joke, for someone who he wasn’t.
OK. Well, performance enhancers. But they didn’t have those back then. I mean, gimme some credit, I’m trying to write a fairy tale here.
There were no princesses in this world, despite claims that the princesses dig the long ball. They would line up after the game, waiting for the true giant to exit his domain. He would exit, clad in the most exquisite threads that the most excellent tailors produced, but he would merely nod. The true giant kept to himself. He wielded his stick?his weapon of choice?in front of thousands, perhaps even millions, but when the fields were emptied and the sticks were back in their resting place, he was a man of one: himself. He was a quiet warrior.
The warrior before him had opened himself, and his kin, to the loose band of dirt-caked rebels. This warrior was different. He was different in other ways, as well: he was destined, by the Fates Upon the City’s Hill, to blast more river-dipped balls into the seas than his predecessor.
No. 71. And no, not Leonard Davis. Did anyone think I was talking about Dan Marino and Jim Kelly for this entire article?
