Stevie Beck, New Prairie Ramblers, Larry Penn, Becky Reimer Thompson.
[undocumented]
It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. And if you’re going off into the kitchen right now and only hear that line- that’s the point of it. It’s been a quiet week.
The Lake Wobegon Whippets are coming down towards the end of their season. It’s been a long one and a hard one for them. Their worst, since last year. Down in the end of the dugout there in the Wally Old Hard Hands Bunsen Memorial Park the Whippets are keeping a running total of the number of outs that they still have to make before the end of the season. They’re down to 54 now. That’ll be the double header tomorrow against the Albany Algamineshaft.
They made 54 real fast last Sunday- losing a double header to the Freeport Flyers by scores of 11-2 and 21-4. And they are anxious for it to be over. In fact, there was some resentment towards the guys that got on base- feeling that they were just prolonging the agony. Including the Whippet slugger Wayne ‘Warning Track’ Tamerdall who got his first home run of the season last Sunday. It was an inside-the-park home run with the bases loaded. Actually, kind of half inside the park- the ball got stuck in the fence out in right field between a plank and the Chatterbox Café billboard. The Flyer’s right-fielder went out there and tried to get it out and a bunch of fans came out from the stands out to the right-field fence and jumped up and down on it trying to get it loose. By then Wayne was going around second. A guy finally ran to his car in the parking lot and got a mallet and a chisel- ran out there to right field and pounded on it for a while and dislodged it. But the throw to the plate was high and to the side and Wayne slid in under it and those were the 4 runs.
It's discouraging, it’s hard when you’ve been out of contention since June. Dutch tells the boys to go out there anyway and do their best and play for pride. But the Whippets say “if we had any pride we wouldn’t be here.” Lefty Soderberg, the Whippet’s big right-hander, has a girlfriend who sits up behind the dugout there and tells him to go out and win a game for her and if he does she will love him a lot more than she does right now. And it just makes him frantic- drives that young man wild. He walked in four runs here this last Sunday.
He says “why does she torment me like that, why doesn’t she just say no, why does she subject me to this misery?”
And then Dutch goes out to the mound and tells him “you’re all tensed up out here. This is a game Lefty, I want you to come out here and have fun.”
“Well if that’s fun, give me a term in prison,” says Lefty, “sick the dogs on me, let them chew on me for awhile. If this is fun, that’d be downright pleasure I tell ya.”
It’s hard being a Whippet. It’s awful hard. If nobody show up at the ballpark to watch them then the Whippets feel blue, feel lonely and forsaken. And then if the fans come and cheer them they feel guilty. You can’t win. Literally. But after this next Sunday, why it’ll all be over. The Lake Wobegon Whippets – win or lose, mostly lose, they’re still our team.
In Lake Wobegon Minnesota, where all the women, at least, are strong- and all the men are handsome and good-lookin’ – and all the children are above average.
1980.08.17 Murfreesboro Daily News: 'Carter Family segment' / Audio of the News available as a digital download.