Sandlot Love

14

"Bennnnyyyyyy" I whined, tapping incessantly on his bedroom window "Benny wake up!" He sat up groggily, turning in his bed to face me.
"Ash? What the hell are you doing?"
"Smalls went on holidays for a week and left his puppy with me to look after but it doesn't like me"
"So why on earth is that my problem?"
"He said you'd help me if the pup was being unmanageable"
"God, Ash its 5:30 in the morning!"
"This dog has already chewed 2 baseballs! It's an urgent matter" I protested, knowing a threat to baseballs would get him up.
He shoved the covers off him and opened the window, climbing out he jumped the low fence and followed me through my open widow. Sure enough the demon dog was lying on my floor gnawing on a baseball clamped between his paws.

"Just take the ball off him"
"He'll just go get another one" I said motioning to the tub sitting in the corner of my room. Benny rubbed a hand across his face.
"None of this should be my problem Ash"
"If you want to keep playing baseball then this dog can't eat all the balls" realising the futility of trying to argue with me Benny went over to the dog and picked it up.
"Just put it in your backyard"
"Smalls said it digs holes when bored"
"So give it these 2 chewed up baseballs to play with" oh, that actually was a good idea. I walked past Benny and opened the door, leading him down the hall and opening the door to the backyard, he let go of the puppy and tosses the other ball to the far end of the yard, the dog chasing after it, despite the ball already in its mouth. I slid the door closed.
"Crisis averted" I said, Benny just rolled his eyes.
"You could've figured that out on your own without waking me at bloody 5 am" I rolled my eyes.
"Over dramatic much. You think you'd be able to fall back asleep?" He sighed
"No, now I'm awake I'm awake"
"Come on" I said, grabbing my mitt and a spare from the kitchen bench "let's go play piggy in the middle with the puppy"

We wasted time fooling around, throwing the ball to each other watching the dog race around trying to keep up, every now and then we'd throw a ground ball and the other person would have to run to get it before the ball chewing hound. It was fun playing with Benny, laughing and enjoying ourselves like we didn't have a care in the world. He ended up staying for breakfast before eventually leaving hours later.
"See you at the Sandlot today Ash, we're planning on doing some maintenance work on the treehouse, we noticed the rails were getting a bit wobbly"
"Sounds fun, see you there"