The little friends were all baseball fanatics. That’s not to say that they did not play other sports. The little friends were pretty good at hockey, soccer, and basketball as well, but baseball was the heart and soul of the little friends athletics. From the moment their parents would allow the little friends to explore on their own, they would get together to play baseball. From a very young age they played “hardball lob” with “pitchers hand”, which essentially meant that you had to serve the ball up to the hitter, and that the pitcher also was the first baseman without actually playing first base since anything hit to the right side was an out.

The little friends would select teams with whomever was available that day to play. It was not impossible to play two on two and sometimes the team hitting would supply the pitcher when there was an odd number of players. Whatever it took to play, the little friends would do and they played the game with all the heart, soul, and intensity of the world series. When the little friends played baseball, it was the most important thing in their lives and they could hold their own against any neighborhood competition they might run across if another group of kids were on the field.

Playing baseball could sometimes be difficult for the little friends as all the fields would sometimes be taken by other kids. However there was a pecking order of places to play and if one field was taken they would simply move to the next until they found an open field. One of the places they played was behind the St. Albert the Great gymnasium. Since the little friends were all parishioners and had graduated a few months earlier, this field was usually always available to them. The field there had a practice field for the CYO team and it had a plate, backstop, and dirt infield. The only issue was that there was a creek in left field and if someone really got a hold of one (or hit a gapper) it could end up in the creek. Since all the little friends were right handed it was a near certainty that the ball would be lost eventually if they played on the field as designed.

This was a dilemma for the little friends but was easy to solve. While a well shot ball to left would end up in the creek, a well shot ball to right would end up hitting the convent (and also be an out). The little friends decided to invert the field so that home plate would be about twenty feet in front of the convent and placed so that an overthrow toward home would miss the convent – not by a lot – it might hit the walk by the front door but that would be about it. Now the little friends would hit toward a new left field, one that actually had a fence which was the backstop of the old home plate. This placed the creek in right field (where if you hit the ball you were out).

With this arrangement the little friends began playing ball in their own personal field of dreams that they literally created. The fact that the left fielder was playing on the CYO practice infield did not bother them. The little friends’ game was based on hitting and nothing in the world felt better than crushing a baseball for them and not having to worry about it going in the creek. What could possibly go wrong? The game progressed and was a fairly close game with half of the little friends fielding and half hitting at any given time. Bob K stroked a gapper to left and was quickly scurrying around the bases (usually a discarded beer can or a rock, anything that stood out in the grass could be used as a base).

While all the little friends were aggressive in sports, Bob perhaps was the most and always gave his all so the little friends on defense knew they had to get the ball in quickly or Bob would have a home run. Sure enough Bob was rounding third as the ball came in from left field to Charlie K in the infield. Charlie wheeled around to throw home (which was being covered by the pitcher under the pitchers hand rule). The throw came in and hit the stone that was being used for home plate and took the strangest ricochet you ever saw and instead of whirling past the convent front porch as a simple overthrow would have done, this ricochet sent the ball right through a second floor convent window.

There must be an instinct that is born into kids because as soon as the little friends heard the crash of the window, they all ran. There was no shock or stunned awe staring at what they had just done, they simply ran and in no particular direction. The left fielder was running toward the left field fence (having no idea what he was going to do when he got there), while the center fielder was running toward the creek (again with no idea where he would go when he got there). There was little logic in the little friends as they attempted to flee the scene. Perhaps it was because in times of crisis they seemed to share the same brain. Bob (who hit the ball) was running as well but he made sure he stepped on home plate first to make his run official before running away from the convent with the rest of the little friends.

Suddenly the little friends heard a voice from above – it was one of the nuns from the convent. “Mr. Thomas” she bellowed out and just like that all their running stopped. They were a few months out of St. Albert school yet somehow were in trouble with the nuns again without even attending.

This was serious and all because they were afraid to lose a baseball in the creek. Not only did they lose a baseball, they lost it by throwing it through a convent window! Worse case scenarios began to run through the minds of the little friends collectively. Did the ball go through a nun’s bedroom window? What if it went through the nun’s meditation room where the nuns go to pray? Perhaps worse, maybe this is the nun’s lunch room where the nuns would be saying grace and preparing to feast when through the window comes the circular calling card from the Class of ’75 landing in their bounty? Surely the little friends were doomed – not only in this life but the next. If you can’t tug on superman’s cape on earth, surely you can’t throw a ball through a nun’s window and get into heaven.

“Mr. Thomas, I will be speaking with your father on this matter” the nun said. Why they singled out Tom when there were eight little friends there no one knows. The nuns knew all the little friends fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters and they knew that the little friends knew this.

Perhaps it was out of habit (no pun intended) for this was not the first time Tom was singled out during a little friend disaster. In 7th grade math class the nun teaching said the little friends caused more trouble than all her other classes to which Tom responded under his breath “at least we’re the best at something”. The nun overheard this and Tom got in trouble. While the little friends had no leader, they did have a spokes person in Tom who was very skilled in the art of tact at a young age, perhaps from his past experience in defending the acts of the little friends.

Regardless the reason, the little friends stopped running when they heard “the voice from above” and began to trickle in and make their way toward the front door of the convent to join their friend Tom and accept their fate together.

They were lined up in their standard “regret” formation and apologized to the nuns (It was sincere as the entire event was an accident). The little friends said that they would pay for the repair which they eventually did – or rather their parents did since the little friends had little cash in those days.

And on that bit of chaos the little friends summer came to an unceremonious end. Little did they know that before their parents would get the window bill, it would be incremented by an act beyond imagination.