Clinton, South Carolina, Thursday, March 8, 2018, 1:41 p.m.

I’ve written about my first two baseball games of the spring. The home team won both. Both were in dramatic fashion. Both had runners cut down on the basepaths with disastrous consequences. One was a bit of a long shot, and the other was damned near a miracle.

One is here, and one is here.

Already, I’m weary of being cold. I’ve had enough of overcoats. I’m ready to put squishy playing surfaces and cold feet behind.

I’ve gotten accustomed to the scorebook I bought on the way to the Shannon Forest-Laurens Academy game. I keep forgetting to take my binoculars. My mind wanders a bit as I try to remember a major-league player who wore the numbers of every player on the field. I quibble about the occasional scoring decision and resolve to put it in the book my way. I tell stories that make everyone nearby realize how old I am.

Both local teams about which I regularly write have new coaches, Luke Tollison at Laurens Academy and Tom Fortman at Clinton. I’d never met Tollison until Tuesday’s game, but I wrote a profile of Fortman when he took the Clinton job. I enjoyed talking with them after the games.

Shannon Forest and Laurens Academy are both Crusaders. Crusaders are popular among the private schools. I saw a Crusaders-Crusaders basketball game a couple weeks ago.

Both Belton-Honea Path and Clinton wore gray uniforms on the Red Devil diamond Wednesday night. It wasn’t confusing because the visiting Bears wore dark, steel gray.

I was pleased Shannon Forest wore green. Names should have a reason. I think a Riverside ought to be next to a river, a Hillcrest at the crest of a hill, and a Palmetto at a place where it ought to be possible to grow them. Here in town, a school that was once on Bell Street burned to the ground over half a century ago, and a new school was built that wasn’t on Bell Street, but the school remained Bell Street.

What was I writing about again? Oh, yeah. Baseball.

Wil Tindall seems to play the entire infield for Laurens Academy. He was one of two players — Clinton’s Caleb Riddle was the other — who began a play by making an error and ended it with an alert defensive move.

At one time in Wednesday night’s game, Clinton (3-2) was leading, 3-0, in spite of walking 12 B-HP batters. The Red Devils held on, 3-2, in spite of 13 free passes and a like number of stranded Bear runners.

So often I finish watching a baseball game and mutter to myself, “Damdest game I’ve ever seen.”

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