JUST ONE MORE BATTER - E.D. Lippert

The most exciting baseball game that Rick Cooper could remember wasn’t played by professionals. It wasn’t played in a big stadium and watched by thousands of fans. Nope, the best game ever was the 1966 11-12-year-old Burnside Rec Council championship. In Rick’s young mind, his route to the MLB went right through this tournament.

The game had everything. There were amazing plays by Rick’s teammates, and lucky plays by the opposing players. A comedian of an umpire whose main goal seemed to be getting home to eat his dinner. There were long time outs caused by 3 or 4 injuries and one stray cat. Most memorable of all though was when Rick’s best friend, John, a player who didn’t have one single base hit the entire season, became the team hero. Twice.

It was a tie game heading into the last inning and as the clean-up hitter, Rick had visions of driving in the winning run. That’s when the umpire yelled the unthinkable, "That’s it for tonight, boys!"

The game wouldn’t be won or lost that night. Trophies wouldn’t be handed out. And Rick wouldn’t know for a full 24 hours whether he could save the day.