Coach and player will be ejected for a player using an illegal bat in a high school softball game.

   There's a crispness in the air, but judging by the brown bat flailing on the Fayetteville Street sidewalk this morning, there's no enthusiasm yet for the season of spooks.

   The creature fluttered and sputtered in front of  the Capital Bank Plaza, indifferent pedestrians glancing at his last gasp, until a janitor came and  unceremoniously swept him into the gutter -- where he remains to this moment.

    I keep imagining his furry corpse morphing slowly back into its vampire form, and cursing the Monday sunrise with its final breath.