[apologies to non-baseball (or cricket) fanatics]

Apologies not necessary, tsuwm and wow. I think we can
acknowledge Ted as the master of this realm, so the rest of us can just know we are operating on a lower plane.

Once upon a time, there was a young boy named Jack. Jack was a gullible lad. He got this trait from his mother, who could be described as gullectible. They lived in a cottage rather far from the nearest village. She sent him to town one day, to trade her record collection for as much food as he could get. Both of them hated this, because they just loved music, especially the early rock and roll songs. Many an evening, they'd put on a record, and just get down! But it had been a hot, dry summer, and their garden was doing very poorly.

Well, this was another hot, miserable day. Jack had the load of records on his back, and it wasn't long till he was
sweaty and thirsty. Lo and behold, he came upon a peddler,
who particularly loved the Motown sound. After looking through the record collection, he offered Jack some magic beans in trade. Jack, knowing he could get home and get a cool drink of water without the trouble of walking all the way to the village, accepted.

Of course, his mother was not pleased. Jack explained that the peddler assured him that the beans would grow clear up to the sky, where lots of treasure was kept by a giant.
There'd be plenty of money to replace the record collection, he assured his mother, and to add an irrigation system, too. Since she really didn't have a choice, she allowed Jack to plant the beans. To his credit, he tended the plants faithfully, and sure enough one of them grew so
tall they couldn't make out the top of it--it just disappeared into a haze of clouds.

They walked around the base of the plant, wondering whether to try the ascent. At length they decided Jack would give it a go. His mother went back in, to pack a bag with equipage for dealing with a giant. Jack came running in and said, "Mother, you don't need to pack that kind of a bag for me. There's no giant up there; Gladys Knight and the Pips are up there." His mother, knowing his gullibility, of course doubted this, so she asked how he
came by this knowledge. He replied, "I put my ear right up
against the stalk, and I heard it through the Great Vine".