Big Hitters

I was the Kirby Puckett of intramural baseball in college; I was Jose Canseco, man. The memory of how I astounded everyone on the field came back to me while I was mowing the lawn.

I was never very good at sports as a kid in grade school. Most lousy players are relegated to right field but I wasn’t good enough for that; when I lobbed the dropped flies back to the infield as hard as I could, the runner usually was around third base before my second bounce brought the ball to the shortstop. Eventually, though, the PE teacher discovered I could play first base. I could catch a thrown ball nearly every time, I had a talent for tagging the base and I was tall enough to stop some hard line drives with my face and then pick it up (the ball) and tag that base. Canseco and Puckett were never first basemen but fielding position wasn’t where I equaled their prowess.

The memories came back while I was mowing the lawn. I think a lot while mowing. I’ve written comedy bits and honed routines while mowing. I’ve never solved accounting problems while mowing but I’ve solved economic and political controversies – well, really, I just created biting satire. Today I wasn’t creating, I was thinking about how worthless a suburban lawn is.

Everyone who has ever mowed a lawn has thought this. Why do we spend time and money and destroy the earth with chemicals, pesticides and gas-powered equipment just to grow a lawn? The only reason is that it provides an ideal place for kids to play ball. You also have to grow a bush for first base and a tree for second and live near a street light to serve as third, but the lawn is the main thing.

I had a lot more fun playing ball on the lawn with the neighbor kids than I ever did sitting in a stadium watching Canseco or Puckett or even Steve Garvey. I played wiffle ball on the lawn with my daughter. She, like her parents, was not great at sports. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, particularly if the tree was never very good at falling. The only way the fruit ever grows anywhere off beyond the root system of the tree it sprang from is when some creature ingests the fruit and poops the seeds out someplace farther down the road. In sports, this is referred to as coaching.

And that’s where sport has gone these days. Little kids don’t play on the lawn; they are pushed into organized sports with coaches to mold them in hopes that they will one day support their parents with their sports income. Every sport evolves from fun street ball or lawn game into a tedious profession. Even Cornhole. Then we pay to watch other people play, when the most fun we ever had was in our own game on our own suburban lawn.

The memories came back to me while I was mowing. I had fun in intramural baseball in college. We played in a big grass field, not a stadium. We had coed teams; each team had to have at least 3 women, so that it was more social camaraderie and less testosterone induced competition. I was at first base. Up to bat was a petite young woman who happened to be my H.R.’s girlfriend. She popped the ball up about half the distance between home plate and first base.

Keep your eye on the ball. That’s what they tell hitters, but it is just as important for fielding, right? Watch the ball into your glove. When I saw that little popup, I sprinted down the first base line, glove extended. The ball was dropping, so I bent forward as I ran and managed to snag the ball, just before it hit the turf.

I had my eye on the ball. I don’t know what the petite young woman was looking at. She ran straight down the line toward first base just as I was running straight down the line toward the ball and her. In the middle, I leaned over and caught the ball just as she ran her stomach right into my shoulder. My shoulder connecting with her stomach caused her to bend over a good deal, with her face coming down toward my back. That was unexpected. I stood up in surprise. Which caused her to be lifted off the ground. Whereupon she continued forward, performing a somersault (albeit involuntarily) six feet off the ground, landing flat on her back behind me.

For some reason this was seen by everyone, especially her boyfriend the H.R., to be my fault. The fact that I had caught the ball and she was OUT was completely overlooked and this petite little wuss was awarded first base. I was looked on as a violent offender, abusing a woman as if I was Jose Canseco or Kirby Puckett.

That memory came back to me while I was mowing the lawn. Maybe it explains why I spent little time teaching my daughter baseball and more time playing things like driveway kickball which had made up rules more like Calvinball than any organized sport.


PS – domestic violence is not funny but, too often, we look the other way when sports figures do it. Michael Vick made big news when he went to jail for abusing dogs and Plaxico Burress is in headlines and in jail for shooting himself in the leg, but how many sports stars make big news and get comparable jail time for abusing a spouse or girlfriend?

Foul Ball Fever ... Catch It!

From Chris Mauger comes a great essay on the life-long aspiration all (real American) men have to catch a foul ball at a baseball game.
(I discovered Chris’ blog after he left a very nice comment on my previous post. He is an elementary school principal so he can understand the maturity level of my humor and the aptitude level of my writing. He is very funny and you should read his blog).

Reading about his foul ball dreams, immediately sent me back to Dodger Stadium – I’m sitting in the stands with my mom and I have my mitt on, ready to catch any ball that comes near me. Nevermind that I am in General Admission, high above the field (just above the blinking red light that warns away airplanes). A home run travels only 400 feet or so; how is a foul ball going to reach me in General Admission, where we have to listen to Vin Scully on my transistor radio to know what we are “seeing” below? None of that matters; the fantasy of catching a ball from the game and taking it home to treasure is the lure that attracted every male to that ballpark.

Oh, we sometimes sat in the bleachers, which were also cheap seats at Dodger Stadium, so I might have caught a home run. But these were the early 60s Dodgers. Runs were manufactured by Maury Wills stealing 1st then 2nd, followed by a sacrifice bunt to move him to third and a sacrifice fly to get him home. Home runs were things other teams got because they – I’m looking at you, Yankees – were in league with the Devil. (That would specifically be the American League). So I sat in foul territory to increase my chances.

Men love action, thrills and violence and yet baseball was still our national pastime when I was a kid. Basketball offers fast-paced action – hockey even more so. Football offers physical contact, maiming and death – hockey even more so. Of course hockey is hard to follow and surely you couldn’t do that on what passed as television in the 60s. Baseball you can turn on at any point and get caught right up to the moment:

"Willie Davis at bat now. Gaylord Perry gets the ball and looks in to the catcher. Davis got the base hit in the first inning and scored on Gilliam’s double, providing the only run in the game. Perry shakes off a couple signs. Koufax has struck out 4 in the first three innings. Perry winds and throws. Of course, Gilliam made one heck of a catch on a hard line drive by Aaron in the second. The ball is approaching the plate now. The Dodgers have three hits, one run no errors. Davis looks like he might swing at this one. The Braves have 4 hits, no runs and one error which … Davis grounds back to the mound .. .put Davis in scoring position for that run … Davis is out at first.”

So baseball is easy to keep up with, which is why your girlfriend goes with you: you can explain all the rules between actual player motions on the field. But it is the foul ball that brings in the guys. You never hear this at an NFL game: “Fans are welcome to keep any errant passes thrown into the stands…” Hockey does let your next-of-kin keep any errant pucks you catch with your face, but you aren’t going to come back for more.

The promise of a caught foul ball indoctrinates kids into baseball worship. Sitting there with your glove on makes you part of the game. So I sat there as a kid, waiting. And waiting. Years later, in Cincinnati, I sat in Riverfront stadium (too embarrassed to wear my glove) waiting. One day I took a friend to the game. About the 5th inning I got myself some ice cream: a sundae served in a miniature, plastic replica of a batting helmet. I looked down to scoop up a mouthful. When I looked up, a foul ball was coming directly toward me. Things began to happen in slow motion – okay, everything was already in slow motion, this was baseball – I saw my friend’s arms reach out and I saw his hands catch the baseball. God had sent ME that baseball … but he was really punking me by making me get that ice cream first. The point is I’ll never forget the roller coaster ride of emotions from seeing the ball finally come and then losing it. I’ll never get the chocolate sauce out of my shorts either.

I don’t know if kids today build the same dreams. There are so few day games, and the night games are so late, it’s hard to bring kids. Without as many young boys learning to reach beyond hope for that ever-elusive foul ball, the popularity of baseball has declined. They try to attract us with hot dogs or t-shirts fired out of a canon, but, come on! That doesn’t make you one of the players like catching a real ball. And the “kiss cam?” Ew, gross! (if you’re a young boy there with your mom or dad, I mean).

Thinking about that, I just had a recovered memory. About 3 years ago, I did get a ball in the stands. There was a foul that bounced around the seats and came to rest in front of the guy next to me. Being that he was a five-year-old, my arms were longer than his and I reached down and snatched the ball right from under his little, 5-year-old feet. Oh my God, that is horrible! No wonder I blanked that out. But, come to think of it, had he got the ball, his dream would have been fulfilled and he could have put aside baseball for one of the other sports. My quick action established one more lifelong fan of America’s pastime.