By MONTE DUTTON

Things kids don’t do anymore because there’s so much else to do:

I’ve never read about it or seen a film, but when I was in college, I discovered that almost everyone had played in their youth what I knew as ‘thump football.” Kids could play it on desks, lunch tables and sidewalks.

It might’ve been the first game I was ever good at. I was a third-grade prodigy.

It was simply ruled and required only a sheet of notebook paper, which is why it was so popular in schools. Extra points and field goals were important. I started out thumping straight-on but soon became a sidewinder, which, as in real football, was more accurate.

It’s disappeared, I’m guessing, because the triangles cannot be thumped in a cell phone. The kids don’t play the game because they can’t game it.

If young, I wouldn’t, either. There are so many virtual fish to fly.

As an addendum, I learned Friday night that the American flag – and a thump football — are folded that way because the triangles honor the Minutemen who wore hats with three sides in the Revolution.

When I was in elementary school, it was an honor to be assigned the task of raising the flag in the morning and lowering it at the end of school. Perhaps that’s how kids learned how to fold both a flag and a sheet of paper.

My favorite minor-league baseball name at the moment is the Greeneville (Tenn.) Flyboys.

And I have personally attended a Montgomery (Ala.) Biscuits game.

My least favorite name is going to be the Hub City Spartanburgers; with the possible exception of when a stocky first baseman boots a grounder, and the first fan yells, “If it was a burger, you’d’ve had it!”

This year the team that moves next year to Spartanburg is known as the Down East Wood Ducks and floats in Kinston, N.C.

Chapin-Newberry Post 193/24, which features a couple Clinton players, moved emphatically ahead on Friday in the first game of its Senior American Legion baseball series, blanking Charleston Post 147, 7-0.

Jake Peterson faced one more than the minimum in a complete-game sparkler. He yielded a hit and a walk. After getting Charleston’s only hit, Kevin Fagan was caught stealing in the third inning.

Meanwhile, Chapin-Newberry (15-9) was scoring a run in the first inning, two in the second, one in the sixth and three in the seventh.

Right fielder Cooper Raines went 4/4 with two runs batted.

Grayson Bennett took the loss for Charleston (14-6).

Chapin-Newberry visits Florence at 6 p.m. Sunday.

Onetime Furman Paladin Walker Zimmerman scored a goal for the United States Olympic men’s soccer team in Saturday’s 4-1 victory over New Zealand.

As football season approaches, I expect to streamline the site name. Since the coverage – Furman and Laurens County – is difficult to convey in a word, I may stick with Wellpilgrim (com, net, et al.). Or, if anyone thinks of anything snazzy, I’ll take it under advisement.

A shorter name makes it more likely that readers go directly to the site without linking through social media (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Advertising alone will not keep me going, but there’s room for a few more. Every ad is inset in every story.

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