A Baseball

In the spirit of Easter, I am going to tell the story of the best Easter gift I ever received at least on the worldly level anyway. I always had the traditional Easter growing up in the mountains of Western North Carolina. We always got new "Sunday" clothes, we always went to church, and we always got an Easter basket filled with chocolate, and after church we did the traditional Easter Egg hunt. One year as I got a little bit older, I guess I was about 13 or 14, that stuff had all fallen by the wayside years earlier (with the exception of the chocolate- I still fought for the chocolate) but I got up one morning and there was a baseball laying on the table at my dinner place. A single, perfectly white, perfectly stitched, Major League approved baseball. I don't care if the Easter Bunny himself laid it, it was the best Easter present ever. I had a neighborhood game going on by that afternoon. I also made sure I batted leadoff that afternoon and that I was the one the christen it with a bunt single down the third base line. Hey, I wasn't about to take any chances.