I’ve told stories before about how frugal my mom was….

My dad wasn’t far behind.  He could/can do amazing things with his tools, and his opinion was “why pay for something at the store that you can build yourself?”

When I was little, I really wanted one of those fancy store-bought bounceback things like some of my friends had.  Not only could you practice pitching, but depending upon the tilt, you could practice fielding grounders and pop-ups too.

I asked dad if he could buy one for me, and he said he’d see what he could do.  A few days later he surprised me with one of my own bouncebacks.

He took a gate off of an old fence, kind of like this one:

Then, he painstakingly wove waxed string across the gate to form a tight mesh.  He tied knots at each intersection and ended up with a grid with about 2 inch centers.  He even spraypainted a red square on it to represent the strike zone.  It didn’t have an adjustable leg to vary the tilt, but he showed me how I could adjust it by leaning it against the tree at different angles.

I loved the heck out of that thing and played with it for years.  It was just as good as anything I could have gotten uptown, except that, in most cases, the ball only rebounded about six feet.  Next time I’m over there, I’m gonna see if he still has it in his barn.  I think he does.