Wednesday 22 February 2017

Donkey Baseball

Back in the mid eighties and nineties, we used to have an odd sounding sporting event in Mojácar called burro béisbol - or in English, donkey baseball. The venue was down in the valley, either near the cemetery or on the land under the Old Mojácar mountain.
The rules were unclear.
In theory, you had to be sat on  a donkey to run the three bases (baseball is like rounders) and the fielders were only allowed to move or throw from the back of a donkey. As for the twelve stout-hearted donkeys themselves, mostly they just wanted to go home. Or bite someone.
This caused a lot more merriment than the game itself, which was just as well,  because they always made me the umpire.
The American naval base at Morón, outside Cádiz, would send us the balls, gloves and bats, and one year they sent a team of marines, who, while not much good with donkeys, at least had a grounding in the rules of baseball.
One of them married our eldest daughter.
My wife Barbara organised the whole thing, of course. She had seen the sport in California and thought it would work here. The beer money went to Animo, our charity. The Red Cross would send an ambulance for the skinned fingers and other small accidents. The mayor would come along, and the owners of the donkeys would be present, each discussing the mischievousness of his particular burro.

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