COFFEETOWN HS SPORTS

Coffeetown baseball took the sting out of a horrific showing from umpire Sparky Hemingway to win its first game of the season over Bolt High School.

With the bases loaded in the bottom of the fifth inning, Bolt sophomore pitcher Fritzy Campagno couldn’t have been sweatier.

Even in the brisk March air, streams of perspiration ran down the varsity call-up’s temples and wind-stung earlobes.

The clammy little creeks wasted no time turning into puddles and ponds on his back and beneath his underarms.

Still, Campagno had Coffeetown’s bulky junior slugger, first baseman Jeff Krintzler, right where he wanted him:

Far away from home plate and in the batter’s circle.

But it couldn’t stay that way forever.

Even with two batting donuts on his aluminum Easton, the hulking Krintzler was able to swat down the occasional hornet that entered his swing radius with ease.

They were big and orange and angry. With each connection of the bat, they made a ‘POP’ and a mess of guts on the icy metal and ceased their buzzing.

Soon, both players knew, Krintzler would be mashing the guts out of Campagno’s pitches.

Coffeetown trailed 2-1 with one out and wiry senior pitcher Ned ‘Kneecaps’ Nelson in a 2-2 count

If Bolt HS Coach Martin Cross’s wife, Becky, stopped talking for more than a gnat’s wingbeat, everyone in the bleachers would have been able to hear young Campagno’s stomach drop.

The task seemed simple enough on paper. All he had to do to keep Coffeetown from busting this one open was locate one more strike.

A double-play would let him live to sweat out another inning at best.

A strikeout or a popout afforded him the opportunity to sweat out Krintzler at worst.

And yet, all the mouse has to do is keep its nose out of the cheese trap.

All Icarus had to do was keep his wings’ span out of the sun’s warm glow.

All the Germans had to do was protect a beach.

One pitch.

Ball three.

Campagno leaned down over the mound and nodded off senior catcher Chris Haxley’s signals three times through.

His cool beads of sweat fell like rain on the already sloggy Coffeetown High School infield sod.

It still hasn’t took all the way just yet.

Lumps of spray-painted-green grass and chunks of mud will pock the turf for a few more weeks.

Even a hard-hit grounder would have been kind to the visiting Bulldogs.

Alas, Bolt’s reliever received no relief between pitches

He called time and met with Haxley and appeared to sob gentle sobs behind his mitt. Haxley shook his head and lifted his mask to spit and walked back to home plate.

Hemingway offered Haxley a new ball and he tossed it back to Campagno to start the barf-inducing battery over again.

Next pitch.

High and outside.

Even Becky Cross stopped gossiping about Coffeetown First Baptist Pastor Scott Dixon’s wife to remark at the remarkably inaccurate throw.

No matter.

Hemingway sparred the air with a couple of jabs that simultaneously made him feel like a MLB ump and look like an out-of-shape shadow-boxing jackass.

‘STEERIIIIIIIIIIIKE THREE!’ he yelled through a double-horseshoe of chaw.

Coffeetown skipper Skipper Danston evacuated the dugout and gave Hemingway the business.

Four and two-thirds innings into the Copperheads’ season, Danston got ejected*.

(*He still has work to do to surpass his school record 16 ejections set last season. At this pace, he will shatter the mark.)

Before Danston even dropped his third cuss, Becky Cross was already back to the topic of Patty Dixon’s back moles.

If Hemingway thought Fritzy Campagno’s previous throw was on the money, his next one held the key to Fort Knox

Coffeetown still had a massive threat looming despite the atrocious and embarrassing umpiring and lack of a coach.

A lefty-righty matchup spelled certain doom for Bolt’s shaky young arm.

As Krintzler took a few final practice swings, Campagno took inventory of the buzzing hive in the net above the batter’s circle.

The sweat on his palms formed a slimy barrier between his palm and his accuracy.

Campagno placed the ball in his mitt and rubbed the moisture off of his left palm and onto the damp thigh of his Bolt-blue baseball pants.

Krintzler popped one last hornet on his bat and jeered a ‘hey battabattabatta’ to the hoots of the Copperheads’ dugout.

No one in the park but Campagno knew what the wheels between his ears were spinning up. As it turned out, it was a way out of this jam.

One moment, Jeff Krintzler was shaking the weighted donuts off of the end of his bat. Trace Adkins’s ‘Honky Tonk Badonkadonk’ blared from the PA system for his walk-up music and several mothers blushed while covering their children’s ears.

The next, Campagno was winding up to throw at the mass of hornet spit and pine pulp just five feet above his opponent’s head.

Hundreds of swarming, pissed-off stingers exploded above the Coffeetown dugout

The nest was so thick – and Krintzler’s arm so gelatinous – that the ball didn’t even come out the other side.

Becky Cross shrieked and jumped into the pond behind the visitors’ bleachers even though it was 45 degrees out and she was a baseball field away from the nest.

Hemingway ruled it a wild pitch and signaled for the runners to clear the bases, which turned the Bolt dugout into a fallout shelter.

Coach Cross jumped in the baseball pond to rescue his shivering wet rat of a wife, but not before Hemingway ejected him for getting in his face and arguing balls and strikes.

Krintzler took off his shirt and swung his baseball bat at the mob of hornets.

“COME GET ME, SUCKERS!” He could be heard shouting at the insects.

Krintzler, who is reportedly allergic to stinging insects, picked all 42 barbs out of his abdomen and arms and back and lips while the stretcher took him away to the ambulance.

“I LOST THE BATTLE BUT WE WON THIS WAR,” he drooled into my tape recorder.

The paramedics assured me Krintzler would be “Fine, we think” as his skin swelled to a shiny pink body-sized blister.

Campagno said afterward that the incident helped him regain his confidence

“Yeah, we lost the game 12-1, but I really found my stuff again when I took aim at the hornet’s nest and nailed it with a direct hit,” Campagno spittled between two hornet-stung lips.

“Even though I’m suspended by the district for the next two games, I think this can give me some momentum into the next time I play.”

A sacrifice fly, indeed.

Oh Bolt, where is thy victory?

Oh Sparky, where is thy sting?

***EDITOR’S NOTE: The author of this report sustained multiple stings during the coverage of this event and filed this article under the influence of a wide range of antihistamines. It has been heavily edited for content, tone and substance.