Affe #207

About Affe mit Waffe Deprecated

Donald Geladman, or "Don" as his comrades called him, led a dangerous life. Most of the time he stood in the open field, where projectiles flew past him. In fact, they only flew by when he was unlucky enough to miss hitting them, which was actually his job. Fortunately, because of his great skill with the bat, that was a very rare occurrence. He was a professional ape sticket player, a batsmonkey to be exact. However, he wasn't just one of the numerous athletes in a popular sport in the Monkeyverse – "the Don" was widely recognized as the greatest batsmonkey of all time.

There were four forms of ape sticket and Test sticket was the format with the longest match duration and considered the highest standard of the game. A player's quality was measured by his batting average, which was the total number of points he scored divided by the number of times he was out – a dismissal caused by the opposing team that ended the batting period. Throughout his career, Don had a batting average of an outstanding 99.94, and that was easily the greatest achievement by any primate in any major sport. A batting average of over 50 was already considered exceptional, and only four other ape players had averages over 60. The fact that Don's average was so far above that of any other sticketer had led several statisticians in the monkey society to argue that, statistically at least, he was the greatest primate athlete in any sport.

His batting skills were so unique that they made him a national hero. Don had practiced hitting since he was an apeling. He invented his own solo sticket game, using not the usual bat shaped like a paddle, but only a narrow but strong stick and a ball half the size. He trained behind the family tree, where a water tank was mounted on a curved brick stand. When he hit the curved brick lining of the stand, the ball rebounded at high speed and at varying angles – and Don would try to hit it again. This form of practice developed his timing and reactions to a great extent. He already managed to reach his first century in his first official game, a score of 100 in a division of a sticket match. This left the adult monkeys speechless and paved the way for his professional career. The success was to continue: He was the only one of eight monkeys to reach 1000 points by the end of May, a rarely-achieved feat – which Don managed not just once, but twice. And he completed his scoring runs with ease and grace. For example, he made a century before lunch and added another century between lunch and tea before ending the day with 309 no outs. He remained the only Test sticket player to pass 300 in one day's game. It was often said the Don was worth three batsmonkeys at least.

However, one famous series of games had always remained a "sticky wicket" for Don, a metaphor for a difficult circumstance – the Bodyline Tour. In ape sticket, the ball was not thrown but "bowled", an action in which the ball was propelled towards the "wicket" – one of the two sets of three vertical posts with two smaller sticks placed on its top. Striking the wicket meant the batsmonkey was "bowled out". A bodyline delivery was not aimed at the wicket but the sticket ball was bowled at the player's body with high speed, expecting him to defend himself with his bat rather than properly hitting the ball. Many monkeys considered this unfairly intimidating and physically threatening in a game traditionally intended to uphold conventions of fairness and sportsmonkeyship. The opposing team devised this strategy to counter Don's exceptional batting skill. Although they were successful and it was one of the few competitions Don's team lost, it brought no glory to the winners. After the game, the opposing team quickly made their way home to avoid becoming the target of a horde of angry monkeys from the audience. And Don? Although he was committed to an offensive and entertaining style of play and this game, which was mainly aimed at him, did not suit his taste, he was very humble and polite. As always, his calm demeanor off the field was in stark contrast to his dynamic nature in the games. He congratulated the winners and quickly made his way home to be with his family, where dinner was already on the table.

With this Donald Geladman coined the term "Geladmanesque", which was still used to describe outstanding excellence, both within ape sticket and in the wider world of the Monkeyverse.

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