Fall ball

This year's pumpkin crop must have been especially healthy. When we loaded up the old pumpkins for the trash, they were still firm.

Over the weekend, we began the yard changeover from fall decorations to Christmas. With Christmas lights and reindeer taking the place of Indian corn and pilgrim flair, Matt's long wait to smash the Halloween pumpkins had reached its end.

We went to the basement to find the appropriate tools of destruction. Sledge hammers or baseball bats? Let's go old school. Wooden baseball bats.

With two bats, we walked out to the alley. We wrapped the pumpkins in see-through plastic, and each took a turn pitching the wrapped pumpkins to the other. From about 6 feet, Matt waited for the first pumpkin pitch. Thwack! A solid line drive - about four feet. Then my turn.

The pitch came into the upper part of the strike zone. Swoosh! The bat split the pumpkin. It didn't cover any distance, but it continued to break down into smaller pieces. It would still good for a couple more hacks, this time of the vertical toss and swing variety. After a total of about five of the pinata-type pumpkin blasts, the first pumpkin was spent. We repeated the entire process with the second pumpkin.

With the destruction done, both smashed up pumpkins remained sealed in their plastic wraps. The whole affair lasted about five minutes. The pumpkins went into the dumpster, and we returned to our winter yard decoration makeover.

This was a first for us, a father-son pumpkin smash up. Matt had been looking forward to smashing the pumpkins for weeks, and the alley turned out to be the perfect place for their undoing. For late November, we both enjoyed being able to take a few swings with a baseball bat.

More and more as Matt matures as a young man, it's getting harder to find easy moments where we connect father and son. Who would have thought it would have happened with a pumpkin, a couple of trash bags, an alley, and pair of baseball bats?