The Jitterbugs Love Jagger

After leaving Heron Bay, the Jitterbugs went their separate ways, and a few of us camped near Camp Kitake on a small strip of land wedged between the Platte on the left, and on the right, the BNSF tracks and beyond it, a stand of oaks winking with fireflies. We woke up hot and hungry in the morning, but due to a few unavoidable delays, we weren't able to leave until after noon, so we spent a few hours reading and playing "Would you rather ..." and leaving coins on the tracks for the freight trains to smush paper-thin. With one penny in tow, as big around as a half-dollar, we finally hustled off down the road to Cubby's (I-80 NE Exit 420). Never have flapjacks and chicken-fried steak tasted so good.

For our game that evening in Valparaiso, the Jitterbugs brought in a ringer of a pitcher, Jeff Heinrich, who went to school at UNL with a lot of the Jitterbugs, and is also married to Mitch's sister, so he felt right at home, since our team's second name might as well be "Mitch and Kin."
Heinrich was bringing the heat, hard and accurate, only giving up three runs in five innings.

And Heinrich was getting all the run support he could handle. In fact, if you'd been driving through Valparaiso around 7:30, you might have thought Independence Day had come early this year. But you needn't have been alarmed, it was only Luke Francis' three-run homer, which easily could have been mistaken for a fist-sized roman candle, shooting thirty feet beyond the center field fence.

Francis' rocket set the tone for the rest of the game, putting a little of the old Lindy Hop Jitterbug swagger in our step. All told, ten Jitterbugs had hits, and we followed up the three-run effort in the first with a five-run output in the second, highlighted by yet another home run, this one by Mitch Minarick. By the seventh inning, we were up 13-3. But coach Paul "Carl Lewis" Demmel was not through with the carnage yet. After getting a walk, he decided that our ten-run cushion wasn't quite enough, so he stole second base. And then he stole third. Some might compare this to beating up on a little kid after you've just stolen his Snicker's Bar, but Paul is the sort of guy who watches the Discovery Channel so he can see lions eviscerate gazelles. He would've stolen home if we'd have let him.

After the game, the Jitterbugs and our fans spent the evening at Val Tavern a few blocks from the baseball diamond. By that point, the kitchen had closed, so we restored our depleted calories with Busch Light and potato chips, just like they did in the old days. Anyway, I've been told beer is a macronutrient. And that was the night: shooting pool, laughing loud, nodding our victorious heads to the jukebox's Rolling Stones.