Box Score.

Certainly it wasn't cool today, but this morning found our heroes sticking their heads outside the back door saying things like, Have you been outside today? You should go outside. And we did, each in turn: I walked the dog. We went to lunch. AMR found an afternoon errand or two. And tonight, as per the plan we hatched in the morning after the been-outside-etc chatter, we stuck our heads out the door again, found things at 7 p.m. not altogether unacceptable, and did saddle the Toad for what might have been the final Dollar Monday of the season down at the Bats. We walked it from here. We found good seats. We drank dollar beer. We ate dollar hot dogs. I did, anyway. AMR is not hot for hot dogs. And the Toad? At eleven weeks? Watched the first seven innings and slept through the eighth and ninth. A religious man would use a word like blessed. I'm just going to say the weather was awfully good (temps falling into the seventies before the sun was down, light breeze, low humidity until after dark).

Tomorrow's the first day—an hour-long meeting only, but still—back at the puppet show. Hard to fathom. But you could smell autumn on the breeze there at the ballyard. This is how it goes. Summer comes and then summer closes itself back down. Not everything that comes with that is bad. Sure, you have to work. Sure, you have to go to meetings, which is/are like work, but with a flesh wound. However: there may be an August—could this have happened in August?—baseball game wherein one could tilt one's face into the breeze—could there have been a real breeze?—and hold one's sleeping son on one's lap and drink the end of a watered down Budweiser Light and think: Have you been outside today? You should go outside.

Box score: Bats won. 4-2. Sloppy game. Beautiful game. Beautiful night. More tomorrow. Here's hoping. We'll see.