FAN: Still A Fan The Early Years VII

Well, the cool toy posts are slowing down as this is the only pic of a few holidays I could find with toys in it that I remember. The Karate Men, Chutes Away which I loved, 3 Revel models, a Star Wars puzzle and Hit 'n Run. Chutes Away the plane moved back and forth on a lever and you looked through a target and released yellow plastic paratroopers by trigger. The object was to land them in the cups on the plate which rotated. It was cool. Hit and run was a lame version of pinball where you simply shot the ball out of a pinball type starter and it would bounce off of one bumper and then go into slots for outs, single, double, triple, etc. The diamond would rotate and you put a plastic player in the batter's box to start. A bar knocked them off into a scoring tray if they made it home on a hit. Another picture from this year showed the Star Wars score LP by John Williams which I actually listened to a lot.
This was my one and only appearance on the mound. I was never made to be a pitcher. I only played organized baseball for 4 years and I mostly played second base, center field or right field. If memory serves me correctly, there was a rule about how many innings a kid could pitch a week and we had a monster week coming up and I was simply eating innings to free up our real pitchers for other games. I didn't hit anybody. Can't remember the outcome of the game at all. My form doesn't look too bad. As I've stated in other posts, I could play each sport enough to not be embarrassed, but even at that age I had no illusions that I was an integral part of the team. The only year I was a starter was when I was 11 and on the minors when a lot of 11 year-olds were already in the majors. I had a good year that year.
This must have struck fear into the hearts of opposing pitchers.....me calling for time in the batter's box! This particular at bat was either a walk or a hit as the next picture in the series shows me on third base. I don't ever recall a triple so I assume the picture was not taken right after. I wish I started playing tennis or golf around this time which would have put me further ahead at the games I do much better at than baseball or basketball. I was too small to even think about playing football. I guess I could have punted?
My first real drum! This is a steel Premier snare drum that had to do until I purchased a used set which will be coming up shortly. All I could do was practice rudiments on this thing. RLRR LRLL......lol.
I was in 5th grade here and Still A Sis was in 8th. We were both in the Memorial Day Parade. This wasn't my first parade as I played cymbals as a 4th grader but skipped that picture as it was blurry. You can't tell here but I'm wearing those cool 70's flip up clip on shades. Very cool. To this day I still remember the cadence we used in elementary school. I was in 4 different marching bands and we'll talk about more later as The Dog will have better stories than me about one of them, but I remember every single cadence I've ever played. I even wrote one that the high school used and continued to use for a while at least after I was gone. That's nice validity I guess that it was catchy. I did steal the bass line for it though although I can't remember from where.