Walmart Digs the Hole Deeper

I gave Walmart a fleeting chance this weekend. No, there was no chance the super-chain would get on my good side; going there was more a matter of situation. You see, the wife wanted to hit some softballs, and we only have two...one of which is a dead ball. We often go to the park, where I pitch to her, and she has all the room in the world to smack them around. We didn't have a lot of time until sundown, so I chose to run to Walmart because of its proximity to my home in relation to other retailers.

I found a reasonable parking space amongst the vast sea of SUVs and jalopies and speed-walked my way in to the store and back to the sporting goods department. There, I found an aisle of bicycling goods, and aisle of exercise stuff, and an aisle of traditional sporting goods (basketballs, footballs). "This should be the place," I thought. I looked through the aisle, finding only basketball and football items, and one of those loose ball bins with only one small basketball and a couple footballs. OK, this isn't the end of the sporting goods, maybe softballs are another aisle or two down...right? I continued to the remaining aisles to find guns, ammo, fishing, and camping supplies. I shuddered at the thought that guns and ammo were more well represented than even football in this store. After re-looking a couple times to be sure I hadn't overlooked a small bin of softballs, I approached the 400 lb camo-clad salesman at the gun counter to ask. He nicely informed me that softballs were available only in spring and summer. I thought to myself, "who is Walmart to say when I can and cannot play softball?" I thanked the gentleman and scurried my way back to my car.

I am amazed they couldn't simply give the equivalent of one basketball worth of space up to a bin of softballs to keep them out year-round. There was plenty of golf stuff, and I play softball later in the fall than I play golf. Blah. Moral of the story? Walmart is the softball Nazi.

Peace,

Alphadork