Nintendo Baseball and Ben Ween

I grew up in a town of about 7000 people in Quebec. I'm not talking a suburb of Quebec City or Montreal, I'm talking about hard core French Catholic Quebec. We had one Greek family, who owned the Pizza joint. We also had an older Chinese couple who of course owned the Chinese restaurant. There was one Muslim dude, my science teacher and a couple of adopted black kids down the street. That was it as far as different flavors and ethnicity's go. As a ten year old, I only knew the term "Jew" from the bible. Jesus was a Jew, and they damn near killed him for it. Actually, they did kill him but the stubborn bastard re-spawned. Anyway, one day at school we were introduced to a new student, Ben Ween (spelling is wrong on Ween but I like it spelled that way so I'm going with it.) Ben was an odd, whiny kid from Florida. Picture Gilbert Godfrey as a 9 year old. The dude was a walking stereotype for Jews and Americans alike.

Ben and I got along ok. We hung out together because there wasn't that many English kids in town. The Anglos stuck together. He was a baseball fanatic. This kid had baseball cards going back to the 30's, including vintage Babe Ruth cards which I'm sure were eventually sold to pay for university or drugs, which ever came first. He even had a collection of old baseball mitts from the 20's and 30's. This kid was 9 years old. I appreciated his love for baseball and was glad to know someone who would go for a catch on a moments notice...although God forbid you make him run a bit. Gilbert Godfrey voice---"Why can't you throw the ball straight at me? Why am I running for the ball? You should go get that ball..."

Anyway, Ben was living with his mother who was A.) Lazy B.) Dumb C.) Didn't really care about anything but her massive hair. Obviously the cards and money came from his father still in Florida. Ben didn't have a NES, so he used mine as often as he could. This is where Ben and I eventually started having falling outs.

Renting games back in the day was the best. For 2.99$ you would be able to snag a game for a couple of days during the summer and have a load of fun with it. There was one summer that I think I must of rented about 10 different baseball games for the NES. Not because I wanted to, but because Ben Weeeeeeen found ways to trick me into it.

Example - Three of us decided to chip in 1.50$ each and get a game and some candy. Myself and the other dude figured we would send good ol' Ben up to the store get us a game while we got in a few games of Contra. Ben was told, and I remember this well, we told him, "Get something two people can play at one time, something new, not a sports game." Simple right? Twenty minutes later, Ben shows up with RBI Baseball, a game which we had rented at least 5 times before. When we asked him where the plan went wrong, Ben just started to whine "Oh, everything else was rented." I called BS. We played for the afternoon and got fed up with Ben crying that I was bunting inside the park home runs on him. He wasn't invited back. Oddly, Ben and his trashy mother left town and headed back to Florida just before the school year. I never saw him again, probably for the better.

For the record, I love all flavors, colours, races and religions but I am very aware that some stereotypes are 100% true. Like I said, Ben Weeeeeeeeeen was a walking stereotype, one that I will never play NES baseball with every again.