Did you watch The Queen’s Gambit, a remarkable series about a fictional chess prodigy? Well, if you’re anything like me, it renewed your interest in chess, a game with no luck involved. A game that mirrors life itself. Are you defensive-minded or aggressive? Do you hide in the bushes, waiting for the right moment to attack, or are you out there big and bold, saying to your opponent, “Come get me”? I for one am aggressive. But when I said, “Come get me,” people had no problem getting me. First up was my son-in-law Mark. He and I were both basically starting from scratch. We’ve now played 5 times and he’s beaten me 5 times. At one point, one of my attacking moves left me so vulnerable, he said with pity, “Oh Andy.” Okay, so maybe I can’t beat him. Next up we had a visitor to our beach house who proclaimed, “I haven’t played in at least 15 years and I don’t think I have ever won. You’ve got nothing to worry about playing me.” He won. Finally, we had another couple over and the wife loves games. She is an avid bridge player, but didn’t know the first thing about chess. I thought, “Haha, at last, someone I can beat.” I offered to teach her the basic moves, like “This piece, the pawn, can only move straight ahead but it has to capture on an angle.” So, I showed her and corrected her and at some point she moved a piece directly challenging my king. I said, “Now you are supposed to say check.” And she tentatively called out, “check.” After studying my options I realized it was actually checkmate.” So John changed my friend’s character to an 8-year-old grandson, because we figured it was more embarrassing to lose to a first-time chess-playing kid than a first-time chess-playing adult (either would be embarrassing and I’d lose to both of them). We tweaked the ending, and that was our first comic. Oh by the way, I take back everything I said about “The Queen’s Gambit.” Chess sucks.

Now onto one of our secondary characters Sam, who used to be an announcer who made money by reading commercials. Now he is the official voice of the “Boulder City Boulders” minor league baseball team. My first real job out of college was as a sportswriter for the Pawtucket Times in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and our big team was the Red Sox’ AAA affiliate, lovingly known as the PawSox. As an aside, Pawtucket lost their beloved franchise to a newer stadium in Worcester (pronounced Wooster), MA, with the unfortunate nickname, WooSox, but there you go. Anyway, we invented a character for Boulder City, their all-time leading home run hitter, Bob “Long Ball” Bixon. As it turns out, Long Ball was a bit disappointed at the turn out for Bob Long Ball Bixon Bobblehead night, and who could blame him? As a former Boulder star who hit 38 career homers, he thought he deserved a bigger turnout. We didn’t tell him that half the people who attended were there for the postgame fireworks, because you know, Long Ball is sensitive about stuff like that. Let’s keep it as our secret, huh.

So that’s it for this week. We will be back at it again with two new ones. Until then, have a great weekend.

Andy and John