<sup>“I would like to be one of those people who treat their
local team like their local restaurant, and thus withdraw their
patronage if the are being served up noxious rubbish.”

—Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch</sup>

One early-spring day in 1992 I sat outside a lovely Prague pub, in a park in Smichov, the district where Mozart shacked up at a friend’s villa during his working visits to his adopted city. However, I was not discussing classical music at the pub, but baseball. My friend and fellow American, let’s call him O’Connor, was explaining to me his decision to tender his resignation for a position he had thought to be his dream job. O’Connor had been recruited by a Prague-based chemical company to act as player/manager for the semi-pro team they sponsored in a fledgling Czech baseball league. He subsequently enlisted me to play for the team.

We had had about a month of cold-weather, mostly-indoor practices; played a few scrimmages on weedy Prague fields; and taken one kick-ass, southbound road trip to a suburb of Turin, Italy for a round-robin tournament that included our ragtag Czech-American hybrid, a Swiss team from Bern, and a half-dozen local sides. My standout memory of that weekend was trying to concentrate in left field while mesmerized by a snow-capped peak of the Alpine foothills looming behind home plate. It had never been like this, standing in left field for my New Jersey high school team. So distracted was I by the postcard-views, that it occurred to me I could well end up like that proverbial little-league nerd, oblivious in right field while flyballs sailed over his head.

The chemical company had not lived up to their word regarding salary and perks, and because the paychecks weren’t as promised, and because O’Connor had come to Prague on a whim (and with little walking around money), he was broke. The day previous, the universe delivered an epiphany of sorts, at the checkout counter of his local grocery. He was buying a yogurt, an apple and a banana, and when he reached into his pocket, he realized he didn’t have enough money for all three items. Consequently, he had to choose between the apple and the banana.
   
As O’Connor related his story there at that pub, there was a note of intense bemusement in his voice: Hausler, he said, a fucking apple and a banana. Imagine, I didn’t have enough money to buy an apple AND a banana. I don’t mean a bag of apples and a bunch of bananas, I mean a single one of each.

And with that, he quit the baseball team, exotic though it was, as cool as it sounded for him to tell Aussie backpackers that he was a player-coach in this strange backwater of Czech baseball. He needed to be free-up for the down and dirty and otherwise boring prospect of work and a regular paycheck. He had immediately scored a job as a bartender at a touro bar in the center of Prague.

With O’Connor out as coach, no more baseball for me. It was ok, though, spring had arrived in Prague, the outdoor drinking season had commenced. O’Connor paused to take a long pull on his half-litre of beer. I took the opportunity to do likewise. He continued: Standing at that grocery counter, I realized that life doesn’t have to be hard. It’s my new mantra, said O’Connor: Life doesn’t have to be hard if you can make it un-hard.

Words to live by.