At work I decided to participate in the Angel Tree, buy a few gifts for a middle schooler for Christmas. I had a 14-year-old boy where all I know is he wears a size medium shirt in men’s, like sports and his special need are “toiletries.”

Hey, great, all of that can be purchased at Wal-Mart. I headed off to the store with my sister and we talked about what to get. At first I thought about t-shirts from a sports team. Well, Wal-Mart’s men’s department was in total chaos and I couldn’t find any cool shirts. Plus, I didn’t want to offend the kid by buying the wrong team!

So we headed over to the toiletries area. I thought about tooth brushes and soap. I thought hair gel would be good, but I didn’t know the race of the child, so I didn’t want to buy the wrong hair gel stuff. 

I said to my sister, “Hey, how about Axe? My kids are always stinkin’ it up after PE with that stuff. It can be deodorant and cologne.”

So we start smelling the different “flavors” as Becky calls them. I look at body spray and she goes to body wash.

She says, “How about this detailer thing, its a little shower scrubby?”

“Oh, cool, whatever, lets just get it all, body wash, scrubby and spray. Its Christmas,” I say, “OK, sports stuff, hmm. Let’s go to sporting goods.”

I look at water bottles and headbands, but I thought it’s not a big enough of a gift if the kids getting soap too.

“Hey,” Becky says, “this football is cool, its like blue.”

“Yeah, I guess so, but I got this basketball and its twenty dollars,” I reply.

“Here’s a little soccer ball, its blue too and five bucks,” says Becky.

“Oh!” I exclaim, “and here’s a blue and white basketball, and its cheaper!”

“Yeah get that, since you’ve got this whole blue theme going on,” she adds.

So I get the basketball and football and I start thinking about how to wrap it up.

I say, “Hey follow me over here” and I head to the laundry basket aisle, “How about a mesh bag for the gift bag and here’s a little mesh shower caddy for the soap stuff? This way his mom can have the bag to put his laundry in later.”

We head off to the check out line after counting up the items and estimating the cost, “I think this will be pretty good,” I smile as I check out.

We approach the exit doors and I stop in my tracks, with not even putting my card back in my wallet, “Oh. No.!”

“What?” Becky says as she stops the cart.

“Oh no…. I’m horrible…I just bought the commercial…”

“Huh?” she says.

“I just bought the Axe commercial!!!” and I start cracking up, “Dirty Balls!  I just bought Dirty Balls!!!”

Becky and I collapse over the cart laughing by the Wal-Mart greeter.

“I got a 14 year old Axe and Blue Balls for Christmas!!!” I cry and laugh.

“What do you want to do about it? Do you want to return it?” she laughs.

“Uhhhh….yeah,” I laugh, “I’ll do it later…Oh my gosh I’m an idiot…I got the kid a ball sack, too!!!”

Subversive marketing has turned my innocent Christmas gift into a nasty thing!!

Need Proof–I have only seen the commercial 1 time…watch here:

Axe Commercial

Below is Harwell’s speech he gave at his Hall of Fame induction.  It was a poem he wrote called “Baseball Is”.  Harwell wrote a lot of baseball songs and poetry in his lifetime.  He also started each Opening Day game with scripture from Song of Solomon 2:11-12:

For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.

God Bless Ernie.

Baseball is the President tossing out the first ball of the season; and a pudgy schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm.

   It’s the big league pitcher who sings in nightclubs. And the Hollywood singer who pitches to the Giants in spring training.

   A tall, thin man waving a scorecard from his dugout-that’s baseball. So is the big, fat guy with a bulbous nose running out one of his 714 home runs with mincing steps.

   It’s America, this baseball. A reissued newsereel of boyhood dreams. Dreams lost somewhere between boy and man. It’s the Bronx cheers and the Baltimore farewell. The left field screen in Boston, the right field dump at Nashville’s Sulphur Dell, the open stands in San Francisco, the dusty, wind-swept diamond at Alberquerque. And a rock home plate and a chicken wire backstop-anywhere.

   There’s a man in Mobile who remembers a triple he saw Honus Wagner hit in Pittsburg forty-six years ago. That’s baseball. So is the scout reporting that a sixteen year-old sandlot pitcher in Cheyenne is the “new Walter Johnson.”
   It’s a wizened little man shouting insults from the safety of his bleacher seat. And  a big, smiling first baseman playfully tousling the hair of a youngster outside the players’ gate.

   Baseball is a spirited race of man against man, reflex agaisnt reflex. A game of inches. Every skill is measured. Every heroic, every failing is seen and cheered-or booed. And then becomes a statistic.

   In baseball, democracy shines its clearest. Here the only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rulebook. Color is something to distinguish one team’s uniform from another.

   Baseball is Sir Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin, asking his Brooklyn hosts to explain Dodger signals. It’s player Moe Berg speaking seven languages and working crossword puzzles in Sanskrit. It’s a scramble in the box seats for a foul-and a $125 suit ruined. A man barking into a hot microphone about a cool beer, that’s baseball. So is the sportswriter telling a .383 hitter how to stride, and a 20-victory pitcher trying to write his impressions of the World Series.

   Baseball is a ballet without music. Drama without words. A carnival without kewpie dolls.

   A housewife in California wouldn’t tell you the color of her husband’s eyes, but she knows that Yogi Berra is hitting .337, has brown eyes, and used to love to eat bananas and mustard. That’s baseball. So is the bright sanctity of Cooperstown’s Hall of Fame. And the former big leaguer, who is playing out the string in a Class B loop.

   Baseball is continuity. Pitch to pitch. Inning to inning. Game to game. Series to series. Season to season.

   It’s rain, rain, rain spattering on a puddled tarpaulin as thousands sit in damp disappointment. And the click of typewriters and telagraph keys in the press box-like so many awakened crickets. Baeball is a cocky batboy. The old timer whose batting average increases every time he tells it. A lady celebrating a home run rally by mauling her husband with a rolled up scorecard.

   Baseball is the cool, clear eyes of Rogers Hornsby, the flashing spikes of Ty Cobb, an overaged pixie named Rabbit Maranville, and Jackie Robinson testifying before a congressional hearing.

   Baseball? It’s just a game-as simple as a ball and a bat. Yet as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. It’s a sport, business-and sometimes even religion.

   Baseball is Tradition in flannel knickerbockers. And Chagrin in being picked off first base. It is Dignity in the blue serge of an umpire running the game by rule of thumb. It is Humor, holding its sides when an errant puppy eludes two groundskeepers and the fastest outfielder. And Pathos, dragging itself off the field after being knocked from the box.

   Nicknames are baseball. Names like Zeke and Pie and Kiki and Home Run and Cracker and Dizzy and Daffy.

   Baseball is a sweaty, steaming dressing room where hopes and feelings are as naked as the men themselves. It’s a dugout with spike-scarred flooring. And shadows across an empty ballpark. It’s the endless of names in box scores, abbreviated almost beyond recognition.

   The holdout is baseball. He wants 55 grand or he won’t turn a muscle. But it’s also the youngster who hitchhikes from South Dakota to Florida just for a tryout.

   Arguments, Casey at the Bat, old cigarette cards, photographs, Take Me Out to the Ball Game-all of them are baseball.

   Baseball is a rookie-his experience no bigger than the lump in his throat-trying to begin fulfillment of a dream. It’s a veteran too-a tired old man of thirty-five, hoping his aching muscles can drag him through another sweltering August and September.

   For nine innings, baseball is the story of David and Goliath, of Samson, Cinderella, Paul Bunyan, Homer’s Iliad and the Count of Monte Cristo.

   Willie Mays making a brilliant World Series catch. And then going home to Harlem to play stickball in the street with his teenage pals-that’s baseball. So is the voice of a doomed Lou Gehrig saying, “I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”

   Baseball is cigar smoke, roasted peanuts, the Sporting News, winter trades, “Down in front”, and the seventh-inning stretch. Sore arms, broken bats, a no-hitter, and the strains of “The Star Spangled Banner.”

   Baseball is a highly paid Brooklyn catcher telling the nation’s business leaders: “You have to be a man to be a big leaguer, but you have to have a lot of little boy in you too.”
   This is a game for America, this baseball!

   A game for boys and men.

Mom had about a 90 minute drive back home so we went to the community bathrooms before her long trip. As we were washing our hands my mom looked over to me and said, “Jane…”

My mind began to race thinking, “Oh this is it, my mom’s going to give me that life-changing-you’re-going-to-college-and-you have-the whole-world-in-front-of-you-speech. What is she going to tell me? What advice and wisdom will she impart to me?”

She looked at me with a tender gaze of motherly love, “Jane, you should really start putting lotion on your elbows, that way they won’t look all old and cracked.”

I stared back at her, my mouth slightly open ready to respond to my mom’s great advice. My pounding mind thought, “WHAT???? I’m going to college and she tells me to ‘lotion my elbows’! No “be true to yourself” or “follow your dreams” or “do what makes you happy” or “keep your pants zipped” (at least my brother got that advice)!”

Then my mouth closed and my eyes formed a squint and I said, “I think its time for you to go, Mom.”

She said, “Okay, baby.” We hugged goodbye and I walked my mom out to her car. I never forgot mom’s wonderful advice and even as a Resident Advisor I would regale the incoming freshman girls of the story of Ma Cobb’s Advice of Don’t Forget to Lotion Your Elbows.

Do I lotion my elbows? Yes, of course, mom said to and I want people to admire my young and supple elbows when I’m older. “She may 92 years old, but she’s got the elbows of a 19 year old college freshman.”

Thanks, mom. Happy Mother’s Day.

I want each day to be distinctive—different from all my other days. No more of the mundane or just getting by. No more of waking up and thinking about when can I go back to sleep again. No more exhaustion or anxiety over the little things. Instead each task and event will be treated as something distinct for me to conquer.

I want my life to be distinctive—different from all other lives in the world. No more quiet Christianity. No more church as a duty. Instead the world will see how distinctive I am. Those distinctive talents will come out. I am set apart from this world—a distinct creature. I am distinct because I am a child of God. When others see me I will have the distinguishing marks of Jesus in my life.

2010 is my year to be what God has called me to be: Distinctive.

Dinner time was a trek to the desert to Cattleman’s Ranch.  It has been voted one of Texas’ best restaurants and I agree!!  They have a steak called the Cowboy that is 2 lbs.  I settled for the 10 oz NY Strip Steak.  While we were waiting for our food to be cooked (and possibly to be slaughtered) we went out on the Ranch and looked at their mini-zoo.  They had rabbits, ostrich, goats, Texas Longhorns and Buffaloes.  Our favorite was the snake pit.  It is a big cage with about a dozen rattle snakes inside.  We could see them slither around and one started rattling at us through the mesh.  Maran was scared and all through our walk we would grab her and make hissing sounds.  Also the buffalo sneezed water at Maran.  Back at the dinner table my steak came and in the first bite I was in love.   I have had steak before but now I realize the importance of cut and quality–like diamonds, steaks are a girls’ best friend.  I ate it all!!!  I don’t think I could ever have another steak in my life because it could not compare to this one.  I also had a baked potato.  For dessert there was apple pie. 

There was no eating after this point. I think you can figure out why.