“wwwwwMMMMMmmmmm... wwwwwwwMMMMMMMmmmm”, the sound of Chris revving his Honda Accord in my driveway was about as impressive as the sight of an eight-year-old kid flexing his muscles.  I set aside my after-school snack and went out to see what he wanted.
         “Yo Purdy, get in-- we’re goin’ to the Phillies game, Mike yelled from the passenger’s seat.”
         “Lemme grab a sweatshirt and tell my mom where we’re going”, I replied.
         “There’s no time for that-- just get in!”  Mike shouted back.  Mike liked to try to liven things up by dramatizing the commonplace.
         “I’ll be out in a minute.”  I said calmly.
         Several minutes later we were on our way to Dax’s house.  Dax was a must on any occasion when we were trying to round up a crew.  Throughout junior high, he had been a calm, quiet kid, but now he was trying to gain a reputation as a rebel and therefore would carry out almost any outrageous stunt that we could think up.
         We arrived in Dax’s driveway and revved the engine.  After several minutes without a response, we switched to the technique of radio-blasting, and again failed to get his attention.  We then resorted to the more conventional method of honking, but still to no avail.  Finally, I was sent inside to seek him out personally.
         I pulled open the glass storm door, knocking as I entered, and found Dax sprawled on his family room couch watching TV, not ten yards from where we were parked.  “Didn’t you hear us out there?”  I asked.
         “Yeah, I just didn’t feel like gettin’ up,” he said.
         “Well get up, you’re going to the Phillies game.”  I informed him.
         “That’s what you think.”  He retorted.
          Mike bounded in from outside, “C’mon, let’s roll, let’s roll!”
         “I’m not going to pay money to see a bunch of whining millionaires run around.  Besides, even if I did want to watch the game, this is where it's at right here,” Dax said, patting his ample, “L”-shaped brown couch.
         Mike countered Dax’s grievances with a fifteen-minute oration (during which he inhaled twice) listing the reasons why he should join us, and, in the end, was successful in convincing Dax that he would have no peace if he didn’t come along.
         Our final stop was at the residence of Tim Sullivan (also known as Timathief Sullivandal, or just plain Vandal for short).  Sullivandal had earned his title through legendary exploits of years past, and by this time had graduated from simple mischief to a role as an untouchable.  In this role, he would merely suggest potential acts of mischief, convince those around him to execute them, then sit back and chuckle in feigned disbelief as his instructions were carried out.

         Upon arrival at the stadium, sheer hunger drove me to invest in a small, overpriced paper bag of fresh-roasted peanuts.  The peanuts were burnt, but they were a desperately needed source of nourishment, and I wasn’t complaining.
         “Gimme a couple?”  Mike asked as he extracted a large handful of peanuts from the bag.  He shelled one and put it in his mouth.  As he chewed, a thoughtful expression came over his face.  Without warning, he violently spit a mix of chunky peanut butter and saliva into the aisle.  “They’re burnt!”  He exclaimed in disgust.  “You paid two dollars and fifty cents for twenty cents’ worth of burned peanuts?  Go return them!”  He advised.
         The peanut vendor examined the especially burnt specimen that I had picked out as evidence.  “You would eat half of them first,” he joked, handing me a new bag.
         When I returned to my seat and repeated the vendor’s joke, a devious look came over Sullivandal’s face and he began to stroke his chin thoughtfully.
         By the fourth inning, we had procured a squirrel’s ransom in free peanuts and, having eaten our fill, we did what any self-respecting teenagers would do--  we used them to pelt those around us.  Sullivandal had already set his sights on an important-looking man in a blue blazer with a walkie-talkie on his hip.  His wind-tunnel hairdo and arrogant stroll made him an ideal target.
         The first three impacts drew no response from the man in the blazer, but the suppressed annoyance in his face assured us that we were indeed making progress.  After a fourth peanut landed atop his head, he said something into his walkie-talkie, then pointed with its antenna into the upper deck, as if to say “you know who you are”.
        We knew who we were, and we weren’t in the upper deck.  Much to our delight, a fifth direct hit several minutes later elicited a repeat performance.  The fans around us began to nudge each other and snicker as they caught on to our game.
        Unfortunately, the fans weren’t the only ones who had begun to catch on--  the ancient, corpse-like usher who had been dully gazing straight ahead for the past four innings was now staring knowingly in our direction.
         Between innings, he walked over and exchanged several words with the man in the blazer.  Without looking up at us, they began to casually stroll in our direction.  The man in the blazer rested his arm on the rail in front of us and took a deep breath.  “I hear you boys been throwin’ peanuts,” he said with the same demeanor with which a state trooper might ask “you in a hurry this evening” from behind a pair of mirrored shades.
         “Naw, we were just eatin’ ‘um and flippin’ the shells down there in the aisle,” one of us replied nervously.
         Upon hearing this, every muscle and ligament in the ancient usher’s face became visible through his loose, sallow skin as his face tightened into a scowl.  Then, in a hoarse voice that one might expect to hear forcing out last instructions from a deathbed, he spoke:  “Shells hell!  They’re throwin’ the whole damn things!”
         “First of all, let me take a look at your tickets,” the man in the blazer said in a business-like fashion.  We had tickets, but they were for seats approximately a half-mile overhead.  “You got the tickets?  No, I don’t got ‘um, I thought I gave ‘um to you,” we chattered, reaching into our pockets.
         “If you don’t have tickets, I’ll have to ask you to leave,” the man in the blazer said, unimpressed by our display.   We left the section and headed for a row of empty seats overlooking right field.
         On our way to our new seats, we found a whole, uneaten hotdog lying on the ground.  Considering the price of concessions at Veteran’s Stadium, this was about as unusual as finding a case of caviar on the street.  We evaluated the risk of eating the abandoned wienie and decided that it was definitely not worth it.  “Dax, eat it!”  Mike challenged.
         “No way in hell,” Dax replied quickly.
         Sullivandal revised the challenge:  “Either eat it, or throw it at the right fielder.”  Dax mulled over the latter choice for a moment and reached for the hotdog.
         We continued on to the empty seats that we had spied, and, after an inning or so of tense waiting, Dax’s opportunity arose.
        The Giants’ manager strolled out to the mound to make a pitching change.  During the delay, the right fielder, Barry Bonds, trotted into the bullpen to get a drink, passing almost directly below us.  Several moments later, he reemerged.  Dax looked anxiously at Sullivandal.  Sullivandal nodded.
        Dax glanced about nervously and released the hotdog as discretely as possible.  The trajectory was good, but Bonds picked up his pace unexpectedly and the frankfurter bounced off the turf no more than a yard behind him.
         The three-hundred pound man sitting in front of us, who had been yelling “forty million, ha, ha, ha” in what we mistook as mockery of Bonds’ new contract, turned and shouted angrily at the woman behind us.   “Hey lady, why don’t you eat your hotdog, before I come up there and make you eat it?”
        Someone shouted back at him and, a moment later, the section was in a state of turmoil.  A swarm of security guards swooped down on the women behind us.  “Let’s go, ladies,” they said.
         “But we didn’t do anything,” the women protested.
          “That hotdog didn’t fly down there on its own-- somebody had to throw it,” one of the security guards hypothesized.
         I turned around just in time to see the entire section pointing at us.
         Several moments later, we were in the parking lot.  We weren’t missing much anyway--  it was the sixth inning and the Phillies were down, eight to nothing.  In fact, on our way to the car, we saw several disheartened fans leaving under their own power through a VIP door about thirty yards away.  For a second, we continued to stroll dejectedly toward our parking spot, then something clicked inside Mike’s brain, causing him to break into an ungainly sprint towards the slowly-closing VIP door.
        The race between he and the door seemed to take place in slow motion.  “You’ll never get it,” a kid selling soft pretzels sang out in a voice that suggested that he saw the maneuver attempted and failed on a regular basis.  Indeed, the race was coming to an end and the outcome did not appear as though it would be a favorable one for Mike--  his quarter-inch thick glasses lay behind him on the pavement, and early casualty of the desperate quest, and he was a good two strides from the door as it swung to within inches of shutting and locking.
        Our hopes crushed, we resigned ourselves to listening to the rest of the game on the car radio.  Then, in a highly unexpected display of athleticism and coordination, Mike took to the air and his outstretched left foot touched down on the red tile floor inside Veteran’s Stadium.  “After you, gentlemen,” he said, gesturing inside with his arm as he held the door open.
         The Phillies went on to win the game in the bottom of the sixteenth inning after one of the most spectacular comebacks in the history of the ball club.  On the way home that night, it was suggested that we continue our streak by getting kicked out of the next night’s ballgame as well.  “No way, tomorrow night’s Carson’s last show,” Sullivandal protested.
         "I'm not going to stay home on my couch just to watch some overpaid senior citizen sit on his ass and make wisecracks,”  Dax argued.  "This is where it's at right here."
 

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