Sunday Dinner Behind the Dugout
If they could not come to the table, I was going to take the table to them.
The tournament that next Sunday was at the big complex in Marshall, about forty minutes from us.
Carter’s team, the eleven-and-under traveling team out of our town and two others, was in the championship bracket if they won Saturday.
I am a retired postmaster, and I do not do anything without knowing the rules first. So on Tuesday I called the tournament director.
His name was Jeff, and he had a voice like he had been answering the same five questions since April.
“Ma’am, you can bring coolers and food for your own team,” he said. “Lots of families set up behind the dugouts or out by the trees. You just can’t sell anything. The host association runs the concession stand, and that’s how they pay for the lights.”
“I won’t sell a thing,” I said. “What if I feed the other team too?”
There was a pause on the line. “Ma’am, if you feed the other team, they’ll probably let you win.”
“I’m not playing,” I said.
“Then I guess I can’t stop you. Just don’t block the walkway, keep it behind the fence, and don’t park on the grass.”
Behind the fence. No walkway. No grass. No selling. I can follow a rule better than anybody alive.
On Wednesday I sat down and figured how many people I would be feeding. Carter’s team had twelve boys. The other team would have about the same.
Add parents, little brothers and sisters and a few grandmas, and I was cooking for sixty.
Nate had said the semifinal was at eleven. If Carter’s team won that one, they’d play for the championship around two. That meant lunch had to be ready by twelve-thirty and hold through the afternoon.
I settled on barbecues. If you are not from here, that’s what we call loose ground beef in a sweet, tangy sauce on a bun.
Some people call them sloppy joes. In southwest Minnesota, at every graduation party and funeral lunch I have ever been to, they are barbecues.
Twelve pounds of ground beef. Eight dozen buns. Ketchup, brown sugar, mustard, a little vinegar, onion, and the Worcestershire my mother always used.
Three crockpots, two of mine and one borrowed from the church kitchen.
I made two pans of bars. Scotcheroos, because Carter would eat the whole pan if you let him, and lemon bars, because Maddie likes anything sour.
I cut them into squares and left the corner pieces in, the way I always have.
Lyle went to the grocery store in town on Friday with my list.
It came to $142 and some change, and Lyle came home and told me the girl at the counter asked if we were having a graduation party.
“What’d you tell her?” I asked.
“I said my wife’s feeding a ball team,” he said, and he set the bags on the counter, and that was the end of it.
On Saturday Carter’s team won both their games. Nate texted me a picture of Carter covered in red dirt, grinning, holding up two fingers.
I cried a little bit at the stove, browning beef, and I told myself it was the onions.
Sunday morning I was up at five. I browned the last of the beef and stirred it into the sauce, and I loaded the crockpots full and wrapped each one in two bath towels and set them in a laundry basket so they wouldn’t tip.