I’m equating this last week of pins and needles, extreme anticipation and buildup with your favorite flirt.

They’ll let you pull up a stool beside them, exchange innocent, bashful glances, get a word or two in before beefing up your false bravado, but just as you make enough headway to merit a twirl across the dance floor, they’re out the door, on to the next poor sap.

For three consecutive days you’ve been teased with the Jackson Prep-Adams Christian opener. For two days Mother Nature thumbed her nose before sampling 5 1/2 superb innings Thursday, and still the two teams remain deadlocked in a 3-3 tie.

I feel like a weatherman over here. Honestly, has anyone proven those phony-baloney certificates from the &uot;American Meteorological Society&uot; are good for anything more than an apparatus to discard crawfish carcasses on? Like the AMS isn’t right up Route 66 from the Diesel Driving Academy.

But I digress. The downpour continues painfully to delay the best-of-three MPSA Class AAA championship series between the Rebels and Prep (I know I’m considered a tyke when it comes to MPSA, but I get the feeling from others that every time I mention Prep, the skies should part or an echo should follow).

Apparently, Cathedral has its own Doppler 2010. Forecasting the oncoming clouds, the Green Wave took care of business in Greenville Monday and didn’t have to agonize about playing an if-necessary Game 3 Wednesday to decide the South State title with St. Joe.

&uot;This weather is giving everybody fits,&uot; Cathedral head coach Craig Beesley said. &uot;I know it’s driving (AC) Coach (Gill) Morris crazy. We’re lucky because we don’t play again until Saturday, but it’s still looking bad at trying to get that game in.&uot;

The jury is out on whether the weather (ha! a homophone, I’m so shrewd) will hold up for Beesley’s bunch to begin its MHSAA Class 1A best-of-three title series against Houlka. Maybe it’s just me, but every time I annunciate &uot;HULL-kuh&uot; I look for a green, peeved, bulging Lou Ferrigno or a Kleenex to spit into.

It’s a foregone conclusion that fans will play &uot;what-if&uot; when two teams from the same town make it this far, especially when those two schools fall under separate organization umbrellas.

Petty differences aside, I’m not hip to why MPSA and MHSAA schools aren’t allowed to play head-to-head.

Seems to me they’d want to beat up on each other, so one could show their superiority and hold it over the other’s head.

The Rebels and Green Wave, on paper, are carbon copies. An arms race with their pitching, busy aluminum one through nine and defenses that won’t get their pitchers in trouble.

A matchup between the two clubs would warrant a World Series-esque race to seven, just to stuff the gullets of those hungry baseball fans in the Miss-Lou.

Looking for a winner? Bark up some other tree. I’m not that big of a sap.

Chuck Corder

is a sports writer for The Natchez Democrat. You can reach him at (601) 445-3633 or by e-mail at chuck.corder@natchezdemocrat.com.