Wednesday, April 29, 2026

MORE…MOVING TO VEGAS

 

I’m a long way from a major league ballpark and since I don’t have cable, I don’t even get a lot of baseball on TV.

 

However, I live across the street from Majestic Park, a city facility in Las Vegas featuring twelve beautifully-groomed softball fields with screens, shaded metal bleachers, home-run fences, enclosed dugouts, protected enclosures for cameras and radar guns, and scoreboards.  The fields are different sizes because the girls who play there (it’s all girls), range from ages four through eighteen.  It’s in use year-round, though I am curious about what sort of action I will see when the temps hit 120 degrees.  I am told there are international tournaments, and I don’t know that for sure, but there can't be a lot of girl fastpitch facilities like Majestic Park anywhere in the universe.

 

I have taken to going over there in the evenings.  I plop down with my discreetly-concealed beers and watch the young ladies.  They are well-equipped and everybody has a nice uniform (fitted, and not cheap).  From ages 12 and up, the girls have individual walk-up music.

 

As for the coaches, I’m sure there are good ones and bad ones, but there are a lot of them, and they are all seem serious about teaching their girls and bringing home the bacon.  I haven’t seen any crazy ones yet, and I haven’t seen a serious argument or shouting match either.

 

You can get a footlong hot dog while you are watching, or some popcorn or fresh donuts or a soda or fresh-squeezed lemonade, and they do not cost what you would pay at Dodger Stadium.  On a pleasant evening, after the sun has dipped below the mountains, contentment abounds for the casual fan.

 

The parents are extremely well behaved, which leads me to believe there are strict rules about acceptable parental behavior.  Most of the moms chat with a girlfriend or two, and some have babies they are tending, while the dads talk to a buddy and sip from their insulated opaque metal containers, much like I do.   Most of the noise comes from the dugouts where the girls are chanting and singing songs and trashing the opposing pitcher.  They ARE actually kids after all.

 

Don’t get me wrong here.  This is not the Mets and the Pirates.  A lot of routine ground balls wind up in right field.  But every now and then, you will see a pitcher who can move the ball around the strike zone and then get strike three on a fastball in the dirt.  I’ve also seen a little porkchop of a girl put together a 10-pitch at bat with 6 foul balls and wind up with a walk, and I thought, “Wow, you just did a baseball thing, didn't you, honey?”

 

I stay until my beer is gone and then I head home.  Lately, however, I’ve started taking more beer.

 

 

*****

         I have written about Las Vegas and its hundreds of housing developments, each featuring dozens of identical structures in identical color-schemes, each landscaped in red gravel (my house) or perfectly green, weed-free bluegrass (Steve Wynn’s house).  Each clot of condos or apartments or duplexes, or whatever, has a soft, multi-syllabic name denoting its existential tranquility, grace and deluxeness to any poor sucker who can’t afford to live there but who can read the name on the coyote-proof barricade surrounding the compound.  I live in Legends.  Other people live in Sandstone Edge or Desert Creek or Tucson Trails.

         The problem is that there are so many of these charming enclaves that real estate guys are running out of names.  If you accidentally copy some other developer, there may be trouble.  There may be lawsuits.

         That’s where I come in.  All you need to do in order to name your project is consult my list below.  Pick one name from column A, combine it with a word from column B, and you will have a unique appellation for your construction that no one will ever accidentally copy or steal. 

A                                  B

Scrotum                        Ranch

Pedophile                      Estates

Spleen                           Conservatories

Prostate                         Manors

Uvula                            Overlook

Phlegm                         Village

Bile                              Canyon

Offal                             Vistas

Smegma                        Reserve

Dung                            Hills

Mucus                           Trails

Scum                            Acres

Putrid                            Crest

Grotty                           Pointe

Rancid                          Meadows

Bunghole                       View

Copyright2026MichaelKubacki

 

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