Gary Carter RIP

I'm not gonna sit here and pretend I give a shit about Gary Carter any more than anyone else, but his death does remind me of how exciting those Expos teams were back in the day.  When we were kids Brothatime!! and I would play a one-on-one baseball game, ie a game that made no sense, wherein he would be the Expos and I would be the Braves.  I'd go through the Braves' lineup (Washington/Horner/Chambliss/Murphy/Hubbard/Benedict etc) and then he'd go through the Expos lineup (Scott/Carter/Cromartie/Dawson/Spier etc); once one of us had caught three fly balls from the other, that was an inning.  Kinda stupid now that I think about it, but much less likely to cause tetanus than our old shed game:

As for baseball, this led to our highest levels of creativity. We’d be all excited cause we’d get a new ball ($1.49 from White’s Auto), but inevitably it would quickly end up in the cornfield behind our house never to be seen again, so we'd hafta wait another week or two before our dad would buy us a ball.  In those long stretches between real baseballs we found ourselves inventing games, and there is one in particular that I do remember with gusto. We had an old shed in the backyard, where the batter would stand about 20 feet away while the other one of us pitched. If he hit one over the shed, home run. Hit the top of the shed, triple, then double/single etc. What did we use for a “ball” you ask? Well, a crushed up Coca Cola can of course. Which became a real treat for the person pitching. As the game would go on the can would get more bashed up and by the end your hands are pretty much shredded to bits, blood everywhere. Looking back that seems weird, but at the time I reckon we thought it was normal.