Weekend Round-Up. Twins at Tampa Bay.
Friday. Twins 7, Devil Rays 1.
Saturday. Twins 8, Devil Rays 1.
Sunday. Twins 9, Devil Rays 6.

It may seem surprising to you, but in the great foreign land of Canada they observe many of the same holidays that we do in the good old U.S. of A. Christmas. Halloween. Quebec National Day. And of course, Mother's Day.

The holiday isn't really the same in the great Northland as it is here—instead of breakfast in bed, children generally bequeath their mother with raw moose and instead of giving flowers they make bouquets from whole maple trees they've ripped out of the ground and instead of fancy dinners families meet over streams and pluck salmon out of the waters with their bare hands. And then, of course, there is the ceremonial Mother's Day Bashing the Crap Out Of The Baseball.

This tradition first came to be during Mother's Day of 1906, somewhere in the mountains of Saskatchewan. A recent band of Greek émigrés had settled near there and over the years had come to observe the holiday by some friendly mother-against-mother competition, reviving some of the ancient sports of their homeland. Sociologists have held up that tribe's Mother's Day festivities as a model of a group of immigrants absorbing the culture of their new homeland while still honoring the heritage of the old, but the truth is the mothers themselves desperately wanted to beat the maple-flavored baklava out of one another. Soon, the Mother's Day Games became the focus of the entire calendar year, and what was once a friendly competition slowly began to tear this band of Greek Canadians in two. The two teams, the Mule Deer and the Musk Ox (or the Mule Deers and the Musk Oxes depending on whom you asked. This tribe was not known for its consistency in rules of usage.) began to live apart from each other and if a Mule Deer should cross a Musk Ox on the path, she might be known to spit.

That fateful year, the clan elders had decreed that the weekend would be given over to a game of the once-thriving ancient Greek sport of bakbal. The mothers began their training in earnest, much trash was talked, and one player who failed at a bunt attempt during a scrimmage was fed to a group of nearby polar bears.

So, it was Mother's Day evening and the Mule Deer and the Musk Ox had been playing fiercely all day, so fiercely in fact that the game had been tied for six or seven hours. Dusk settled across the land and the Mule Deer mothers suggested the Musk Ox mothers might wish to surrender immediately lest they begin lactating from strain and the Mule Deer mothers suggested the Musk Ox mothers might try to put up or shut up and that they were really lacking in the breastage region.

The details of what happened next are somewhat unclear—there was some staring into dugouts, a hit batter or two, some words exchanged at home plate, and then before anyone knew what had happened, the mothers had rushed onto the field and began pounding the maple leafs out of each other.

Hair was pulled. Legs were bitten. Breasts were twisted. And the townsfolk, instead of trying to stop the fracas, stood on the sidelines and cheered. (Thus birthing another Canadian sport, though one that came to be played on ice.)

There was one boy, though, who was not cheering. This boy, a young lad with a sensitive heart and beautiful blond curly hair rather like that of a china doll, watched the mother-on-mother violence with horror. Tears streamed down his face as he watched his own mother knee another woman in the teeth. Then, something inside him snapped. Without a thought, he ran up to the press box, grabbed the PA mike, and shouted:

"STOP! STOP!"

His normally angelic voice was fraught with anguish, it carried over the whole field and one by one the mothers heard the tortured cries of this cherubic child and unclenched teeth, loosened hair, unhanded breasts and looked up at the boy.

"You must stop this!" he shouted. "Mother's Day isn't about fighting. It isn't about hate or trash talking or mother-against-mother. Mother's Day is about family, about tradition, about love, and about eating raw moose! Don't you see?"

And then the young lad took the bakbal ball and hit it all the way to Nunavut.

Well, needless to say, pretty soon the women were all hugging and crying and apologizing and after that, Mother's Day was a peaceful and loving time again in the mountains of Saskatchewan. But every year just as dusk settled over the region, a boy ran to the tallest peak and hit the crap out of the baseball—and soon the tradition spread all over the great land of Canada, as a reminder of both our basest instincts and of our higher selves.

So, this weekend, as young Justin Morneau hit the ball from Tampa Bay to Nunavit over and over again, he was doing it not just for the Minnesota Twins, not just for his mother, but for mothers everywhere, and for a little boy a century ago who had the courage to stand up and say, "I love you, Mom. Now, stop twisting Mrs. Koskos's boobie."