"Country Hardball"

It would stand to reason that anybody perusing this particular post would immediately assume that I am embarking on a piece about our national pastime.

There are at least two very good reasons for this including my unwavering devotion to a team that smells like cabbage cooking or perhaps that today happens to be the day of the "Mid-Summer Classic" or MLB All Star Game.

Not to disappoint the legions of fans and followers that I have (28 to date), but unfortunatly this post will take an unexpected turn.

This is an homage to phonetic word combinations.

While being directly related to the boys of summer, the term "country hardball", in my most humble of opinions, is an example of a well balanced, emotion provoking structure that serves as an example of my very lure to the art of the written word. So balanced in fact that one could deduce that the term itself might transcend the boundaries of the sport in which it refers to and lend it's influence as a great name for a rock band or a truck stop diner off of route 441 through the Smokey Mountains.

Point being that when a person is talented enough or just plain lucky enough to produce the perfect word combo, the power duo is free to explore possibilities outside of its initial intended use, and in my case, embed itself deep inside the pshycy and rolls around like a marble in an empty fishbowl only to be quieted when released by a concoction of written words to describe such a phenomenon.

There are few terms that provoke emotion and deserve such attention, and "county hardball" is one of them, now joining the ranks of "lung butter" or "draconian devil".