Something about driving around in the neighborhood where you grew up makes you feel like a spy. You see the house of your old best friend and it may shock the current occupants that you know the floor plan and how it always mysteriously smelled like pickles.
You may even catch a glimpse of an aging ex-neighbor and realize that they couldn't possibly recognize you from thirty years ago--it would be so funny to stop and call them by name and watch the wheels spin. But not intriguing enough to actually do it.
The playground where you used to play basketball. The field where you meticulously played golf for a whole blazing Texas summer. There's an interstate running through the gap where the soccer field once was--I remember fishing icy cans of Shasta out of a cooler at the end of a game.
When I moved back to my old hometown, I ended up on the far north end--it didn't hit me until recently that down the street the site of the grocery superstore has a special significance--the entrance is erected directly on top of left field of the old baseball diamond where my crowning sports achievement took place. It accidentally happened while I was so frustrated that I gave up on playing well and tried with all my might to blast the head off one of the opposing players.
---
I'm not sure why I ever wanted to get into sports. I was always strong but very small and very slow. I must have set a record in soccer for playing eight complete seasons without ever scoring a goal. I was one of the best defensemen there ever was, and we even won division titles, but I didn't even get close to putting one in the net for our team. In football, I remember getting leveled, having the wind totally knocked out of me, and deciding that I didn't want anything to do with that kind of hitting ever again.
I had some raw tools for baseball, but never any finesse at all. I could throw the ball with almost destructive power--I could throw the ball so hard it would zip into the receiver's glove with a loud, attention-getting smack--definitely ahead of my time for my age. The coach rewarded this talent by parking me in the middle of the anthills of the dreaded and boring outfield because I was the only one who could heave the ball in to the other players if it was well-hit by our opponents.
In 1980, I was 10 years old, and Texas was experiencing the worst heatwave in recorded history--50 days over 100 degrees, and there I was standing as the dirt around me baked quietly, ripping open in wide, prehistoric cracks. Even though our games were regulation competitions, the fields were in tremendous disrepair--the outfield was composed of a conglomerate of dirt mounds held together by the scorched brown carcasses of dead weeds, which were woven together to make the ball careen across the lumpy ground unpredictably whenever it was hit over the heads (or through the legs) of the infielders.
In my baseball career, I was always on the same team. The coach's son, Chris, always pitched, and he always sucked. And we always lost. Chris would get unnerved any time he started to get into trouble, and our team would get shelled like we were under attack by anti-aircraft mortars. It made things interesting from the standpoint of an outfielder, but it wasn't very fun to lose every game in the hottest summer ever. Occastionally, Chris would have a meltdown, pitch a whiney baby fit, march off the field and even quit the team. But the next week he'd be back on the mound, serving up meatballs for the other team to shove down our throats. When you're the coach's kid, you don't get sent out to the weedpatch.
It was during one of these complete drummings that I completely lost interest in baseball. We were playing the Pirates and they were extremely well-coached. They also were cocky and kept spitting nasty comments at me and my teammates and were smirking as they beat us 12-2. The sun was beating down on my head and I just started thinking about other cool things I could do, like taping baseball cards to my bike tires and making it sound like a motorcycle. I was marooned out in left field and was studying a fire ant mound when I heard the crack of a bat--I looked up and saw Chris' pitch getting rocketed back at our team--specifically right at me with quite a bit of speed as it bounced over the third baseman's head and headed down the line into the outfield territory that I was supposed to protect.
Time just seemed to tick off slowly like the hands of a stopwatch suddenly submerged in gelatin. I could see that the runner on second base fully intended to round third base and head for home. He was a short little guy and I remember seeing the old, beat-up batting helmet wobbling on top of his head as though it were 10 sizes too large for him. Sometimes, especially when your team is good and you're shelling the other team's outfield, lots of runners get on base and when you're up to bat you just have to put on the batting helmet that's sitting there in the dugout whether it fits or not.
This is not what was going through my mind at the time. At the time I was reconciling the fact that I was really mad that our coach's son was ruining all my fun by getting us killed every game, that the same coach kept pointing me out to the ridiculous outback also known as our outfield, and that it was so damn hot outside. That smug bobble-headed midget rounding third was just the topper. I took it personally that he didn't have sufficient respect for my throwing arm, and I couldn't wait to teach him a lesson. I had made a perfect play on the ball--it must have bounced off one of the larger, flatter weeds--and I had a second to think before throwing the ball in. I was supposed to throw it to the cutoff man at second base. The runner would score.
Hitting the cutoff man was for the other players who cared. The ones who didn't have a cannon for an arm. We were losing by ten points and the game was all but technically over.
I clearly remember thinking, even though I was at least forty yards away, that there was no doubt that I was going to peg this guy in the back of the head with every ounce of my strength. I took two quick steps, cocking my arm back and burning it straight at him with very little arc and putting everything I had into it, swinging my arm across my whole body with a huge follow-through.
I couldn't wait for that ball to clank off his head and leave his brains sloshing and ringing inside like the clapper on the Liberty Bell--that goofy-looking bobblety-headed freak.
But instead, a miracle happened. The ball sailed about 6 inches high, sailing over bobble-head's left shoulder and straight into the glove of J.P. Magginola, our catcher and the best player on our entire team. Even though there is no way J.P. could see it coming, he somehow caught the ball and stood in the base path in front of the completely astonished runner--it was a second before the runner got to the plate, and there was no where for him to turn.
He had no where to go.
His coach had no idea of what to say to him. Or time to say anything.
J.P. even looked a little surprised.
The kid gingerly ran right into J.P., who tagged him out. He stood there in a cloud of dust, shocked. The helmet went spinning off behind home plate somewhere.
The parents in the bleachers behind our bench, perhaps for the first time all season, erupted in a jumping, screaming celebration honoring the best play our team had ever made. J.P. was the hero. He turned and waved to his parents, who beamed with pride. The cheering lasted over a full minute, then died down.
Although I was happy to have been part of it, it seemed a little unfair. I was just a kid, and maybe I wasn't a very good sport, but I wanted a little of the credit for that killer play. I had languished in right field the whole damn summer, and I had been running after fly balls from Chris' sorry pitching as they fell in the cracks and the ant piles and weed patches. I couldn't wait for the season to be over, but in the meantime I wanted someone to know that it was me who had thrown that ball.
I mean, J.P. Magginola didn't manufacture that ball himself behind home plate, did he? He didn't pluck it out of thin air--well, maybe he did, but I'm the one who planted it in thin air in just the right place while trying to kill that Darth Vader-looking punk who tried to take an extra base on me.
A couple of minutes later, before Chris served up another meatball, the coach, as an afterthought, hollered out into our weedpatch outfield "Who threw that?"
"I did" I said weakly.
"Good throw, Mike" someone said courteously. And that was it.
My moment in the sun.
You may even catch a glimpse of an aging ex-neighbor and realize that they couldn't possibly recognize you from thirty years ago--it would be so funny to stop and call them by name and watch the wheels spin. But not intriguing enough to actually do it.
The playground where you used to play basketball. The field where you meticulously played golf for a whole blazing Texas summer. There's an interstate running through the gap where the soccer field once was--I remember fishing icy cans of Shasta out of a cooler at the end of a game.
When I moved back to my old hometown, I ended up on the far north end--it didn't hit me until recently that down the street the site of the grocery superstore has a special significance--the entrance is erected directly on top of left field of the old baseball diamond where my crowning sports achievement took place. It accidentally happened while I was so frustrated that I gave up on playing well and tried with all my might to blast the head off one of the opposing players.
---
I'm not sure why I ever wanted to get into sports. I was always strong but very small and very slow. I must have set a record in soccer for playing eight complete seasons without ever scoring a goal. I was one of the best defensemen there ever was, and we even won division titles, but I didn't even get close to putting one in the net for our team. In football, I remember getting leveled, having the wind totally knocked out of me, and deciding that I didn't want anything to do with that kind of hitting ever again.
I had some raw tools for baseball, but never any finesse at all. I could throw the ball with almost destructive power--I could throw the ball so hard it would zip into the receiver's glove with a loud, attention-getting smack--definitely ahead of my time for my age. The coach rewarded this talent by parking me in the middle of the anthills of the dreaded and boring outfield because I was the only one who could heave the ball in to the other players if it was well-hit by our opponents.
In 1980, I was 10 years old, and Texas was experiencing the worst heatwave in recorded history--50 days over 100 degrees, and there I was standing as the dirt around me baked quietly, ripping open in wide, prehistoric cracks. Even though our games were regulation competitions, the fields were in tremendous disrepair--the outfield was composed of a conglomerate of dirt mounds held together by the scorched brown carcasses of dead weeds, which were woven together to make the ball careen across the lumpy ground unpredictably whenever it was hit over the heads (or through the legs) of the infielders.
In my baseball career, I was always on the same team. The coach's son, Chris, always pitched, and he always sucked. And we always lost. Chris would get unnerved any time he started to get into trouble, and our team would get shelled like we were under attack by anti-aircraft mortars. It made things interesting from the standpoint of an outfielder, but it wasn't very fun to lose every game in the hottest summer ever. Occastionally, Chris would have a meltdown, pitch a whiney baby fit, march off the field and even quit the team. But the next week he'd be back on the mound, serving up meatballs for the other team to shove down our throats. When you're the coach's kid, you don't get sent out to the weedpatch.
It was during one of these complete drummings that I completely lost interest in baseball. We were playing the Pirates and they were extremely well-coached. They also were cocky and kept spitting nasty comments at me and my teammates and were smirking as they beat us 12-2. The sun was beating down on my head and I just started thinking about other cool things I could do, like taping baseball cards to my bike tires and making it sound like a motorcycle. I was marooned out in left field and was studying a fire ant mound when I heard the crack of a bat--I looked up and saw Chris' pitch getting rocketed back at our team--specifically right at me with quite a bit of speed as it bounced over the third baseman's head and headed down the line into the outfield territory that I was supposed to protect.
Time just seemed to tick off slowly like the hands of a stopwatch suddenly submerged in gelatin. I could see that the runner on second base fully intended to round third base and head for home. He was a short little guy and I remember seeing the old, beat-up batting helmet wobbling on top of his head as though it were 10 sizes too large for him. Sometimes, especially when your team is good and you're shelling the other team's outfield, lots of runners get on base and when you're up to bat you just have to put on the batting helmet that's sitting there in the dugout whether it fits or not.
This is not what was going through my mind at the time. At the time I was reconciling the fact that I was really mad that our coach's son was ruining all my fun by getting us killed every game, that the same coach kept pointing me out to the ridiculous outback also known as our outfield, and that it was so damn hot outside. That smug bobble-headed midget rounding third was just the topper. I took it personally that he didn't have sufficient respect for my throwing arm, and I couldn't wait to teach him a lesson. I had made a perfect play on the ball--it must have bounced off one of the larger, flatter weeds--and I had a second to think before throwing the ball in. I was supposed to throw it to the cutoff man at second base. The runner would score.
Hitting the cutoff man was for the other players who cared. The ones who didn't have a cannon for an arm. We were losing by ten points and the game was all but technically over.
I clearly remember thinking, even though I was at least forty yards away, that there was no doubt that I was going to peg this guy in the back of the head with every ounce of my strength. I took two quick steps, cocking my arm back and burning it straight at him with very little arc and putting everything I had into it, swinging my arm across my whole body with a huge follow-through.
I couldn't wait for that ball to clank off his head and leave his brains sloshing and ringing inside like the clapper on the Liberty Bell--that goofy-looking bobblety-headed freak.
But instead, a miracle happened. The ball sailed about 6 inches high, sailing over bobble-head's left shoulder and straight into the glove of J.P. Magginola, our catcher and the best player on our entire team. Even though there is no way J.P. could see it coming, he somehow caught the ball and stood in the base path in front of the completely astonished runner--it was a second before the runner got to the plate, and there was no where for him to turn.
He had no where to go.
His coach had no idea of what to say to him. Or time to say anything.
J.P. even looked a little surprised.
The kid gingerly ran right into J.P., who tagged him out. He stood there in a cloud of dust, shocked. The helmet went spinning off behind home plate somewhere.
The parents in the bleachers behind our bench, perhaps for the first time all season, erupted in a jumping, screaming celebration honoring the best play our team had ever made. J.P. was the hero. He turned and waved to his parents, who beamed with pride. The cheering lasted over a full minute, then died down.
Although I was happy to have been part of it, it seemed a little unfair. I was just a kid, and maybe I wasn't a very good sport, but I wanted a little of the credit for that killer play. I had languished in right field the whole damn summer, and I had been running after fly balls from Chris' sorry pitching as they fell in the cracks and the ant piles and weed patches. I couldn't wait for the season to be over, but in the meantime I wanted someone to know that it was me who had thrown that ball.
I mean, J.P. Magginola didn't manufacture that ball himself behind home plate, did he? He didn't pluck it out of thin air--well, maybe he did, but I'm the one who planted it in thin air in just the right place while trying to kill that Darth Vader-looking punk who tried to take an extra base on me.
A couple of minutes later, before Chris served up another meatball, the coach, as an afterthought, hollered out into our weedpatch outfield "Who threw that?"
"I did" I said weakly.
"Good throw, Mike" someone said courteously. And that was it.
My moment in the sun.
1 comment:
nice posts....reminded me of my glory days....ahahahaha
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