Red Rover Red Rover
Let Martin come over
When I was a kid I knew about organized baseball (little league and all that) but was not really interested. I looked at the hoops I had to jump through to participate and went NAH - not for me.
But I did like playing baseball and back then the neighborhood was swarming with kids who were as Ray Stevens sang were "free as a bird".
This was way before people were aware of sexual predators preying on kids
Who often turned out to be baseball coaches!
So I was lucky
We kids invented our own variations on baseball.
Once, for some reason, I had a very flabby softball - sort of a small pillow - we used it for baseball games in a very small space. You'd get a home run if it got hung up in the chestnut tree between the building to the right and the parking lot to the left.
Rotation was an important principle among us kids. You'd have your turn as pitcher and then rotate to third base and then eventually to be batter - no teams.This was not a consciously stated principle - it just seemed the natural way to go ahead.
That was when I as about 10 living in an apartment building
A year later kids from a bigger neighborhood started having bigger games where we had teams
There was a big open field nearby that was under hydro lines.
We set up an impromptu diamond under one of the big towers carrying the wires
I forget how the captains were selected but at the start of each game nobody would have a team - the captains would invite people to come to their team.
(a little embarrassing if you were the last selected)
Then the game would be played and one team would win and one would lose and then we'd get ready for the next game.
The teams would assemble and the captains would say "Red Rover Red Rover - Silem come over - Silem being a powerful player on the team opposing the captain. That would iterate for a while and then a new game would be played.
This was sport and we kids were certainly competitive. We all worked hard to become skilled at the game. But there was no chauvinism involved. We didn't have team names even since the teams changed with each game. There was no ra-ra "we are the champions" stuff.
There was no umpire. There was no rule book. We all knew the rules and could all see the play. And we were playing. We could just drop disagreements and carry on.
(This was a time when boys would play with cap guns and have play gunfights. Bang - got ya! Nope you missed! We never argued ?
The idea was to play a good game.
Later I went on to enjoy chess - the rules there are pretty laid out and clear. When I was young I was advanced and won a lot of my games. As I grew older the players I played were more advanced and i lost most of my games. But still - I play chess as a pleasure.
One characteristic of the baseball game I spoke of was that we were kids - some of us were 12 and others were 6. Everyone was welcomed to the game. We'd cheer when the 'little kid' who was short stop could catch the ball and throw it to second base - both teams ?
I'm not a kid now and really don't know what the world of a kid is like these days. I don't think it's like my experience.
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.