The Boyfriend League
Chapter 1
Families Needed to Provide Homes for Rattlers
For anyone not familiar with Ragland, Texas, the front-page headline in that morning's Ragland
Tribune may have seemed odd. But I'd lived in Ragland since the day I was born. I couldn't think of
anything more exciting than living with a Rattler.
It was Thursday morning, and I'd grabbed the newspaper to check out my weekly column, "Runyon's
Sideline Review," because it was always a rush to see my byline. But as I sat at the breakfast table,
before I'd turned to the sports section where my column usually appeared, the headline had snagged my
attention and the possibilities bombarded me.
I absolutely couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it before. Having a Rattler in the house would be
awesome!
Okay, I don't mean the slithering-along-the-ground-tail-rattling-in-ominous-warning rattler. I mean the
sexy, hot, to-die-for players on our town's collegiate baseball team. As part of the Lonestar League, the
Ragland Rattlers was one of nine city teams in the north Texas area made up of college players who
wanted to play baseball during the summer. Local families hosted the team players.
Apparently this year, they were a few families short. And what better family than mine?
I heard a car honk and knew it was my ride to the softball field. My best friend and I both played on the
high school softball team, but during the summer we just played whenever we had time to arrange a
game with friends, which wasn't very often. Between attending the major-and minor-league games
played in the area, plus being almost-groupies to the collegiate league, we didn't have a lot of time to
commit to organized sports of our own.
I mean, if the choice was playing on a field with girls or watching a field of guys, Bird and I were going
to choose the guys every time.
Her real name is Barbara Sawyer, but when she was a baby, her dad had thought she looked like a tiny
bird, always chirping for food, and so he started calling her Birdie, which, over time, became Bird.
Sometimes you gotta wonder what parents are thinking when they name or nickname their kids.
My own dad, I knew exactly what he'd been thinking when I was born. He wanted a boy. Instead he got
me. Definitely a girl.
A year before I came along, my mom had given him another daughter, Tiffany, and Mom figured two
kids were more than enough, especially since she wasn't a stay-at-home mom. We were a two-income
family with a two-income lifestyle. Mom worked as a legal secretary in a prestigious Dallas law firm
about thirty miles south of Ragland.
Anyway, Dad decided if he wasn't going to have a son, he could at least have a son-sounding name in
the family. Hence, my parents named me Danielle, which of course got shortened to Dani.
