IDS reporters Sam Hurst (left) and Thane Lees (right) lost in Indiana.

Harney Nation is wherever you find it, and this week it’s on the road in Indianapolis at the Midwest Regional Little League Tournament. On Saturday afternoon, my problem was that I was a thousand miles away, back in Rapid City. I was trapped in my living room, watching a painfully slow pitch-by-pitch recap of the opening day game between Harney and Cherokee, Kansas, scroll slowly across my laptop screen.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the effort of streaming factoids of baseball games, but I’m old school. It’s just not like being there, and for a reporter, not “being there” is like torture.

I don’t care if Brett Beyer “#9 doubled, advanced to second”. I want to know if he ripped a hard line drive into the gap or a fly ball that one-hopped the fence. I want to know if the throw was close at second. I want to know if his slide kicked up dirt.

I don’t care if Cameron Fees struck out a Kansas batter. I want to know if he was intimidating. Was he throwing gas right past them? How does a fan get a real feel for a game without being there?

I was making the best of my distress. IDS just didn’t have the travel budget to send anyone to Indianapolis. So I pouted. I scowled at my wife. I mowed the lawn, and I sent texts to Jake between innings.

And then it happened. It was just too much to take.

Timmy Paris went big fly. Next batter up, Zach Solano went big fly. Back-to-back power…the Harney Way. “Okay, okay…” I screamed at my computer screen. “Where did they hit their homeruns? Did they have smiles on their faces when they crossed home plate? Was Big Tim Paris pacing up and down the outfield fence? Was Parker Solano chasing his big brother’s homerun ball?” I wanted to feel the game, smell the game, and all I had to hold on to was that lousy, tedious, text scroll, “#7, Solano, solo homerun.”

So I called Jake. “Come on! Tell me again…why aren’t we in Indy?”

“I know, I know.” He said, trying to calm my rage.

“This is Rapid City. This is ‘Baseball Town USA’. There must be a dozen people in this town who would step up and sponsor our Little League coverage. We’re desperate. Who can we think of to step up?”

Suddenly, it hit me like a bolt of lightening…Stoney. We could call Stoney.

Rapid City dentist Dr. Carl Stonecipher is an institution in local baseball. He’s the longtime pitching coach for Post 22, and this summer he has spent more than a grandpa’s required number of heat stroke hours sitting in the bleachers at Timberline watching his two grandsons play Little League. Only a week ago Stoney had stopped me to ask, “Are you going to Indy?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“You’ve got to go. You’ve got to go.” He told me. “You’ve covered Little League all summer. You’ve got to go.”

Jake was crunching the numbers. If we left at 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, and drove 75 miles an hour all night, we could be in Indy at the ballpark by noon. Harney’s Sunday game against Kearney, Nebraska was scheduled to start at 11:00 a.m.. We would be an hour late, but that was better than watching another game scroll across my computer screen.

When Carl Stonecipher came to the phone I was nervous and to the point. “Stoney. We need help getting to Indy. Would you consider being the sponsor for our Little League coverage?”

“How much do you need?”

“A lot.”

“Go. Go. Go. You’ve got to get there.”

And so we did. Jake was unshaven and wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. It took him half an hour to pack and gas up his car. He didn’t waste time to shave. I told my wife, and without so much as asking, she got up from her desk, drove to Safeway and came home with a road-trip cooler of granola bars, lemonade, diet cokes and ice packs.

I hugged her goodbye, and Jake yelled to her across the hood of the car, “Everything precisely planned, as usual.”

My wife yelled back, “It’s just the way my marriage has been from the beginning.” We were off, out of the plane head first without parachutes…the IDS way.

“You know what we need to make this trip work?” Jake said as we passed New Underwood. “We need Thane.”

Former Post 22 pitcher, current Northern University student, Thane Lees joined IDS this summer as our social networking guru and baseball insider. The only problem with Jake’s idea was that we were racing east on I-90, and Thane was in Pierre about to play in the South Dakota amateur baseball tournament. “I’m just going to tell him he has to come.” Jake said, with a bravado I wasn’t sure he could sustain once he actually called Thane.

Thane was five minutes from turning off his phone and taking the field when he got Jake’s first text. “We’re on our way to Indy. I need you to drive to I-90, find a place to park your car for a week, and meet us at the gas station. Epic journey. We’ll be there in two hours.”

Five minutes went by. Ten minutes. Then the phone rang. It was Thane. “I’ll be there.”

And so we drove through the night, through Minnesota and Iowa, through rain and wind. Across the Mississippi, into the land of Lincoln. Jake drove through the darkest of the night. I slept. I woke at 2 a.m., worried about the fate of the global economy, and talked with Jake for an hour about the difference between Keynesian economics and supply-side economics. Then I dozed off again. Thane slept right through the whole night.

When we pulled up at the Tournament we smelled. We were exhausted. We got out of the car and couldn’t walk straight. 16 hours in the car and we were walking  into a humid, stifling 90-degree Indianapolis afternoon toward the familiar cheers of Harney parents. Hayden McGriff had just hit a homerun to put Harney on the board in the first inning. We had found Harney Nation.

“You know…I’m never going to forget Stoney for doing this.” Jake smiled as we walked toward the game.

“Yeah, you’re right.” I answered. “But by the way…do you have any idea how we’re going to get home?”

Jake thought for a moment…”Maybe we’ll just keep going.”