by John "Choo-Choo" Shannahan
10/2/2013

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
For there is great joy in Mudville---David Robinson hit one out!

Sure, the above is not quite what Ernest Lawrence Thayer intended when he penned his famous Casey At The Bat poem in 1888.  But modern baseball must deal with modern realities even when discussing the vintage game.  And the reality in 2013 is that David “Hops” Robinson is every bit as worthy of meaningful verse as his 19th century predecessor, and unlike Mighty Casey, he performed heroics when the game was on the line.

Thus was the story this past Saturday, as the Mudville Base Ball Club concluded their 2013 season with an exciting 14-13 victory over the Melrose Pondfeilders.  The game, played by 1864 rules at the Spencer-Peirce- Little Farm in Newbury, was part of the farm’s annual American Music and Harvest Festival.  Mudville had lost an 11-5 encounter against a mixed nine of the Essex Base Ball Organization earlier in the day, and quickly found themselves trailing Melrose 9-4.

It would have been easy for our “boys” to raise the white flag so as to descend upon the nearby Ipswich Ale truck.  But instead, as Ken Coleman might have said, “They sounded attack and came battling back.”  Marc “Go-Go” Golding, Allen “Deadwood” Goldberg, Kevin “King” Conley and Ed “Yogi” Harrington banged consecutive singles in the fourth inning leading to three Mudvillian runs, and they added three more in the fifth with singles by Jacob Newcomb, Robinson, Peter “Citizen” Barbieri, Golding and Goldberg.  With two tallies in the seventh, Mudville took a precarious 12-11 lead, only to fall behind again when Melrose added two of their own in the bottom of the eighth inning.

And so when the first two batters flew out to start the ninth, the prospect of another joyless day in Mudville appeared quite real.  But Newcomb wasn’t quite done and he singled, bringing to the plate the man known as “Hops”.  

Any veteran of the Holliston Senior Softball League can tell you about David “Hops” Robinson.  Playing shortstop for Casey’s East, he has made the spectacular routine; the impossible an every game occurrence.  His performance for the Mudville BBC has been no less impressive, whether it be in the field or as a power hitting left handed batter.  

Casey may have struck out, but his modern day incarnation had other plans.  Robinson belted a long homerun over the right fielder’s head, and when he crossed the plate, Mudville lead 14-13.

But the game was not over, and neither was Robinson.  As Mudville returned to the field in the bottom of the ninth, he quickly extinguished a Melrose batter with a fabulous barehanded grab, and with two outs and a runner dancing off of third base,  he joined his teammates in celebration as Barbieri snagged a foul for the final out.

The game over, our “Boys of Summer Ale” retired to the beverage truck to celebrate their success.  There, they reflected on a season that while short on wins was long on laughs and adventure.  Let the leaves fall and the snow fly, for in six months the birds will return and the trees will blossom.  And once again, men from our town will proudly pull on a shirt emblazoned “Mudville”, and take to the field.