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HOLY WINDS
By Jerry Vilhotti
Situated near a bay, across from an island where the souls of prisoners like the "BirdMan" once howled, beneath steep hills that plunged toward waters that were to become grave fields for seals and dolphins, in a deep depression that daily wrestled with air currents of great magnitudes of velocity - stood a ballpark where the game of baseball was played, by a team that left The Big Apple for the lure of more money on the west coast, from April to sometimes October.
During home stands the park was almost always filled to capacity by fanatics - despite threats of earthquakes - who watched the doings with children-like wonderment; never once realizing the stadium was home to the Greek god Aeolus, who was surrounded by lesser gods holding candle sticks up to his greatness, who delighted in making this "pastime" so anxious for many ballplayers and their watchers.
When he decided, he could make a pop up hover over second base for a couple of seconds before propelling the little white sphere against a fence to ricochet into an unsuspecting uniformed person's neck who was minding the pastures.
"I bet twenty drachmas this one will be caught by the short stopper mortal," said Hermes.
"And I'll wager it won't even be caught!" Zeus said.
"I say the protector of the first sack will!" screamed Athena.
"You're both on!" Hermes said putting down the gold as he looked down intently from their mountain perch.
They were entitled to have their fun for weren't they - the Greeks - the first to begin endowing humanity with dignity?
At the very beginning of the sound of the ball hitting a part of a fashioned tree trunk called a "bat" the thing appeared to be going out of the park so high and far it was smashed but then it began to come down to the protector of the second sack who had returned from a long journey to mid right field pasture and situated himself near the bag where he suspected the ball would land and just as he was about to pluck the ball out of Aeolus' mouth, it took another vehement bounce in the winds to allude the "big hand" completely and fall gently onto a patch of brown earth.
While all the Greek gods continued to watch this thing they discovered some time ago and delighted in manipulating the mortals below - paying them back for having the Dark Ages with all its ignorance eat away at their proud souls casting giant shadows upon it ignoring what the Greeks and Romans had worked so hard to sculpt - like having the blue-uniformed mortal behind the pentagon forget where the "steek" or "baw" zones were and all the other tics inherent in the actions, Aeolus kept on blowing out his lungs giving all the movements even more dimensions than the anonymous inventor of the game ever imagined.
"This is even better than watching little league home runs going over the green monster!" shouted Zeus.
After a half hour of this amusement, the gods began to watch the fans in the stands who kept blinking rapidly while shivering realizing that this was just the start of the first half of the first inning of the big inning ....
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AEOLUS
Custodian of the four winds. A minor deity, he is the son of a king called Hippotes, and lived on one of the rocky Lipara islands, close to Sicily. In the caves on this island were imprisoned the winds, and Aeolos, directed by the higher gods, let out these winds as soft breezes, gales, or whatever the higher gods wished. Being visited by the Greek hero Odysseus, Aeolos received him favorably, and on the hero's departure presented Odysseus with a bag containing all the adverse winds, so that his friend might reach Ithaca with a fair wind. Odysseus did as Aeolos bid, but in sight of his homeland, having been untroubled by foul weather, he fell asleep and his men, curious, opened the bag, thus releasing all the fierce winds, which blew their ship far off course (Odyssey X, 2; Vigil I, 52).
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