The season for sporting events is on us in full swing.

Just over the past few days, I've heard more talk about bats and bunts and sacrifices than you'd hear in a day at Brave's training camp.

Seems like every child, male and female, over the age of five is showing off new hats, jerseys, and assorted injuries that come with the advent of warm weather and short pants.

I got to thinking the other day (which is always a dangerous proposition for me) about all the various maladies and injuries that seem to pop out during this time of year.

We all know about bumps and bruises and abrasions and sprains, but see if some of these other ones visit your house anytime soon.

1. Blackberry fingeritis:

This is a malady caused by little fingers picking too many blackberries that never make it into the bucket to be brought home.

This has easily distinguished

symptoms, which start with scratches all over legs and arms, a stomach ache that rivals one caused by licking an oil pan (don't ask how I know how that feels), and most importantly, a strange purple circle around the affected's lips.

Known Cure:

a lot of TLC and a bowl of vanilla ice cream to dilute the blackberries, as well as a good tub bath and scrubbing with something akin to Lava soap.

2. Screamin' strawberries hienieyitis:

Here's the picture.

Runner on second, one out.

Hard hit single to right.

Runner

heads home on the crack of the bat.

Right fielder uncorks throw (first in his life, by the way) that looks like a phaser loosed from the deck of the starship Enterprise.

It's gonna be close.

Runner breaks into textbook hook slide, catcher has ball, cloud of dust, umpire looks in, he's…

who cares, because the runner just felt the skin that used to be around his calf slide all the way up to his, well, southernmost extremity.

We've all seen fresh ground hamburger; now we can see it on our leg.

Known Cure:

a pat on the rear (making sure that it's the other sidethan that on which he slid) and either a heartfelt, "great slide, hoss" or "we were robbed by that blind #@$%&#%* (p.s.

Make sure the blind @&%&$&%$ doesn't hear you).

3. Solar overdoingit itis:This seems to especially affect the female of the species during the summer.

It looks like it has something to do with the unavoidable desire, upon the first sunny day of spring in which the temperature is above freezing, to slip into a very skimpy bathing suit, coat themselves with oil, and lie in the sun until a frying sound can be heard.

This is usually accompanied by copious amounts of conversation and libation, which, in turn, magnify both the burn and the gossip.

Known cure:

If it's your wife, ultimate sympathy, because the tables will turn one day.

If it's just friends or kin, mix up whatever smells like a really good Italian salad dressing in the tub and let them marinate.

4. Gardener's grunt and groan:

For some reason, a row of tomatoes, a row of peppers, twenty hills of cucumbers, thirty hills of squash, five rows of turnips, half an acre of peas and beans, twenty four rows of corn, and a watermelon patch seem to make you look like a cross between a hyena and a Neanderthal; i.e., both your ends are dragging.

Known cure:

a lawn chair, a large glass of iced tea, and the realization that the only thing worthy of bread and mayonnaise is home-grown tomatoes.

5. Brain cramp:

For some reason this really seems to affect men.

Here we are one minute, sitting in our offices or at work, doing our daily toil to add to the commerce of the world, and then, BAM!

somehow we're sitting in our boat, or walking down the 7th fairway, or driving our pickup to some remote pond where the bream grow huge and the mosquitoes don't, or we find ourselves at our fourth cousin's ex-sister-in-law's grandmother helping her shell butterbeans on the porch or….what were we talking about?

Known cure:

I don't want to know.

I'll just put up with brain cramps and fishing trips and suffer through them.