Mitch Cartwright had come to the baseball stadium in Sacramento with his father Adam and uncle Hoss Cartwright but he didn’t feel much like playing. Though he had his glove and bat with him like usual but actually didn’t expect that he needed it at all. Coach Jimmy Miller saw the Cartwrights and walked to them.
“Adam and Hoss, we have a player short. Jeremy Clark is the starting pitcher but there is no third baseman”, said the coach.
All three first looked at each other and then at Mitch.
He felt what was coming up and said, “Oh no. I really am not going to play. I have a headache, stomache, my ankle is hurting and to make it even worse I suddenly get troubled by heavy smurferitis. That is very infectious for ball players.”
Adam and Hoss began to laugh hard because they knew this excuse a long time.
“I don’t care which disease you have because you are now in the line-up placed as third baseman. Get changed and then report back to me here”, Jimmy said to Mitch.
The boy gave his glove and bat to his father and went to change.
“The children use smurferitis as an excuse for a chore which they must do but don’t want to. The twins love smurfs”, Adam explained laughing.
In the locker room Jeremy said to Mitch, “I heard that you can pitch as well.”
“Yes, I surely can do that and hard and clear too. Most of the time I only pitch strikeouts”, the young Cartwright answered.
He showed how he had to held each ball. Jeremy was quick learner.
The Ponderosa Cowboys was the away team and so the first to bat. The opposite team were the City Lords. The pitcher, Frank Stone, had planned to let the Ponderosa Cowboys loose. First at bat was short stop Teddy Rashdon. He got a walk. Then catcher Matthew Walker got his turn to hit and he also got a walk. The same was given to right fielder Paul Becker. Mitch was fourth on the batting list.
Jimmy whispered to him before the boy went to the home plate, “Hit a grand slam.”
“Piece of cake”, Mitch reacted laughing.
Frank looked at him and threw a slider. Mitch didn’t rethink for a moment and hit the ball out of the stadium. The ball got by the smack quite a speed and ended up on the ice cream wagon where Ben Cartwright happen to be with his grandchildren Lisa and Benji, the 2 year old twins of Adam.
“Is this ball yours?”, asked the ice cream salesman.
“Yes”, said the rancher.
He got it and held the round object with him. Meanwhile his team scored 4 runs already. Frank Stone was already very moody when the game started and hereby he threw again 3 times a walk. The second baseman of the Cowboys was Lee Sing. Frank was really ratty and threw a fastball to Lee. The young Chinese hit the ball so far away that there was another grand slam homerun scored. Jimmy began to smile more and more while Dennis Carr, the coach of the City Lords, became more moodier. After 3 outs the City Lords finally got a chance to score but the Ponderosa Cowboys had received clear instructions to prevent that. There was no one out yet. Nick Carr stood at first base and Frank Stone at second. Third baseman Louis Owens was at bat and hit the ball in the direction of Mitch. The young Cartwright caught it and threw it to Lee at second base and he threw it to first base where Mickey Jackson stood. By this nice double play the Ponderosa Cowboys were at bat again.
The second and third inning became a repeat of the first inning for the Ponderosa Cowboys and so the game continued nicely. For the visiting team then.
“Jimmy, Can’t they play baseball?”, Mitch asked suddenly.
“Apparently not. But they don’t have a natural talent like you which our team has”, answered the coach.
“They are just bats with bats and then I insult the hitting weapons”, Mitch answered dry.
In the first half of the fourth half inning Mitch was at bat. He hit the ball again out of the stadium and made so his fourth homerun of the game. The ball ended up in a plate with soup which the wife Dennis Carr, Cheryl, was eating. It was tomato soup and by the hard smack the soup ended up on her white dress, in her face and in her new hairdo.
Angrily she came to the dug-out of the Cowboys and asked, “Who hit this ball away?”
Adam, Hoss and Jimmy looked at her and Adam asked calm, “Mitch Cartwright. Who else?”
Cheryl threw the ball down and went to her husband. The Cartwright brothers and Jimmy were rolling on the ground of laughter.
Adam got the ball and said, “the twins will love to have that one.”
He kept the ball with him.
Dennis came to them and said to Adam, “I demand that Mitch Cartwright gets disqualified for this game. Or otherwise we stop with it.”
“Stop then because Mitch is one of our best players”, Jimmy reacted seriously.
Next Dennis hinted his team to come to the dug-out. Hereby the game got decided in the advantage of the Ponderosa Cowboys. Final result: 25-0. Innings, 4,5.
Head umpire Derek Jones said, “The Ponderosa Cowboys have won this game because the City Lords gave up.”
Because Mitch knew where his little brother and sister were he made sure that they each got a ball which was hit away by him.