First roller derby contest like the old times
Roller girl, Sarah Escobar
Thanks to niece-in-law Sarah Escobar of Spokane, I watched my first live roller derby contest in Yakima on May 24. Spokane won, 238-108.
About 20 members of the Escobar clan, from Spokane, Pasco and the Yakima Valley attended. It was like the 1960s and 1970s when we followed family members in high school sports.
After the match, everbody went to Miner's for burgers and fries. Everyone except me, that is.
Brother Bob offered to buy, brother David offered to buy and, finally, nephew Greg offered to buy. I couldn't do it.
Not thinking ahead - or back to the old days - I ate a burger at home three hours before the game. My plan was to avoid having to buy food at the SunDome.
This wasn't just any burger. It was a Mt. Adams from Legends Casino. Pat brought it home from work, and it was still erupting at eight o'clock. There was a time when I could down two Big Miners.
At Miner's, Bob and Dave ran into old semipro baseball teammate Mas Seto, and he asked for me.
"What?" he exclaimed. "Ted turned down a free Miner burger?"
The roller derby experience itself was fun. Part of the fun was figuring out what was going on. "For a while, the group's common phrase was: "I don't know."
Most of us were from the baseball-football-basketball days. Some of us are still trying to figure out soccer.
Part of the game is for the players - girls - to knock each other all over the place. But there's a penalty box for those who do it wrongly. Hip, butt, shoulder and breast bumps are allowed. Elbows are not.
Neither is the crack-the-whip maneuver of 1960s TV roller derby. Still it was fun.
This one little girl from Yakima was most entertaining. She was on the floor more than she was on her skates. We felt sorry for her until Sarah explained that it's just as much fun to be knocked down as it is to knock someone down.
About every 30 seconds, one of the girls would make a hacking motion to her hips, the skating would stop and one bunch of girls would leave the floor and be replaced by another. We finally called Sarah's husband Jamie to sit with us.
"Oh, she's calling off the jam," he said.
Jam? I didn't see any jam. Or peanut butter.
Anyway, Jamie explained the jam, the jammers and the blockers. Fortunately, we had it all under control when Sarah got to be the jammer for the first time in her career.
Sarah sailed away and came back around the group and passed enough opponents to score 4 points. The last three, seeing this Mac Truck coming their way, just fell and gave up the points.
Sarah took a victory lap. When she came back around, she looked up and saw her fan club doing the wave - senior citizen variety - flashed a big grin and threw up a No. 1 signal.
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