BASEBALL

The Cincinnati Reds are in the midst of rebuilding a winning team and as a result people are looking for diversions - anything so that we don't have to solely focus on their winning and losing.   One of these diversions is Joey Votto's promise to give shortstop Zach Cozart a donkey if he made the National League All-Star team.  Well, that all reminded me that I once played in a donkey baseball game.

In the late 1970's or early 1980's, I was deep into coaching football, baseball and softball for the Pisgah Youth Organization. As a money-making event, the group organized a donkey baseball game between the coaches. A donkey owner was pushing this event and operated like a traveling road show. He brought in four or five donkeys and he was armed with an electric prod.

The game was played as it normally would except that instead of running the bases, the batter would have to mount the donkey after he had hit the ball and then try to navigate from base to base on the ass.  Impossible!  The donkey was stationed near home plate.  You hit the ball and then tried to jump on the beast and urge him to run toward first.  If he wouldn't go at all, the owner would goose him with an electric charge. That really didn't help but it did make the donkey move violently.

I gave it a good try but couldn't get the damn thing to go where I wanted in time to beat the throw to first base.  As I recall, the game didn't last very long.  I'm not sure if anyone scored but the raucous crowd got a good laugh at it - us.

Not long after the game, we heard that the owner/operator of the donkey show was ordered to stop the shows or face arrest for cruelty to animals.  It's difficult to have good clean fun anymore.
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