Opening Day 2008 for the Timber Rattlers is April 3. That is 130 days from today. This off-season, the countdown will be based on books. Each day between now and Opening Day 2008, I will pick a random book out of my library and excerpt a passage off the page number corresponding with the number of days remaining to the first pitch of the new season. I will try not to repeat a book during the countdown.Today’s excerpt is from The Mythology of Native North America. This collection of Native American myths was pulled together by David Leeming and Jake Page.
This excerpt is the end of a Serrano myth. A hunter’s wife is killed while he is away. She brings him to the Land of the Dead as a still living person. The dead are wary at first, then accepting. Finally, they feel bad for him.
“It’s too early for him to be a dead person,” they said among themselves, “and this isn’t a good place for live people. Maybe we should have his woman go home with him.”
They told the couple they could go but shouldn’t have anything to do with each other for three nights after they got home. The couple happily agreed and left, and once they got home they were continent for three nights as they had been instructed. What they didn’t know was that three nights for the dead means three years for the living. And when the hunter woke up on the fourth day, he was alone again.
Put today’s excerpt in a baseball context.
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