Family sticks together - I’m seven years old and we were playing a team that my cousin played on.  He hit a ball, made it to first and tried to stretch it into a double.  The ball was thrown to second and he was caught in a rundown, also called a “pickle” (stuck in between first and second base).
 
In normal baseball, the player with the ball would run at the baserunner and either tag him or he would throw the ball to the base he’s running back to (in this case, first base) and then the first baseman would tag him out.  If the defense executes this play correctly, it takes maybe one or two throws.  If done incorrectly, the baserunner could be running back and forth for 1/2 an hour.
 
Needless to say, when you have a bunch of 7 to 10-year old kids out there, this type of play rarely takes one or two throws.  However, I had an ingenious idea.  As soon as I saw my cousin get in the rundown, I left my shortstop position and ran right at him, so I was basically standing right next to him.  I put my glove up asking for the ball.  My idea was, they could eliminate all this running and throwing and chasing by throwing me the ball and I could just reach over and tag my cousin.  See?  I AM SMART!
 
But, for some reason, my team didn’t throw me the ball.  Maybe they were awe-struck by the revolutionary new idea I had.  Or, maybe they knew I sucked and would probably drop it, I don’t know.  So, instead of my cousin running back and forth between two players, you had my cousin AND me both running back and forth between two players.  Back and forth we went for five or six throws, my cousin desperately bobbing and weaving to avoid getting tagged out, me bobbing and weaving right with him while waving my arms emphatically asking for the ball.
 
Apparently, this was the funniest moment of the season.
 

 
Doggone you Adam Sandler! - I’m probably in 5th grade or so and we had a game on a Saturday afternoon.  We show up early to set up the field and to warm up.  Warming up basically consists of tossing the ball around to loosen up the arm.  Two players would stand about twenty feet apart and they would throw the ball back and forth.  After a bit, they would lengthen the distance between them, resulting in longer throws.
 
This is what I was doing that sunny Saturday afternoon.  Since there’s no runners to worry about, funny hops off the ground to deal with and no fly balls to lose in the sun… it’s pretty easy to catch and throw, catch and throw.  A teammate and I were throwing the ball back and forth for about five minutes… I threw the ball to him.  He caught it and threw it back to me.  I put my glove up and…
 
I’m not sure what happened.  I think there was some sort of planetary gravitational shift or something.  I guess there could be a tiny, minute chance that it could be due to me being totally horrible at baseball.  Whatever the case, instead of the ball nestling in my glove like the hundreds of times before, it tipped off the top of my glove and hit me right smack in the forehead.  A big bump showed up on my forehead and everyone was worried enough that they took me to the hospital and I missed the game.
 
So yes, I got hurt and was taken to the hospital due to injuries occurring while WARMING UP BEFORE A GAME.
 
I mean really, this just sucked.  When a kid gets hurt during a game, the coach runs out there and the teammates gather around.  The kid usually gets up and everyone (including the kids and coaches on the other team) clap in support of the kid for toughing it out.
 
Heck, when I got hurt, the other team hadn’t even showed up yet! 
 
Just like earlier Not So Great Moments In Dramamine Boy History entries, there is no photo or video evidence of this event.  So, we’ll just have to do the best we can.
 
First, we need a profile picture:
 

Hey, that’s a pretty decent profile… that should be on a nickel or something.
 
Okay, let’s add a hat
 

and of course, we need a glove
 

There we go.  Aaaaaaand… action.

Merry Christmas everyone!… uh, yesterday.

Take Me Out of the Ballgame - When I was eleven, we had a good team and we qualified for the championship game.  It was the last inning and we were ahead by a run or two.  This is the time where champions step it up.  They want that ball hit to them, because they know they will make that play, no matter how difficult it may be.  They want to be the ones that take charge and lead their team to victory.
 
I was not one of those men.
 
As I was standing out there at shortstop, I believe the exact phrase going through my head was, “Please strike everyone out… please strike everyone out”.  Sure enough, a ground ball was hit to me.  I put my glove down and whoosh… it went right under my glove, between my legs and into the outfield.
 
My dad, who was the coach at the time, decided that it might be a good idea to put someone out there that could actually catch the ball (and heck, how can you blame him).  So, he took me out of the game right there.  Yes, I was replaced, allowing me to walk off the field in shame IN THE MIDDLE OF AN INNING!  You don’t see that happening to Derek Jeter, do you!?!
 
Then again, I guess you don’t see Derek Jeter suck at fielding, either.
 
And yes, we ended up winning the game and the league championship.  With me on the bench.
 

The Art of the Steal - After a year of not playing baseball, my friends got me to play again.  After being terrible all those years, taking a year off amazingly didn’t improve my baseball abilities.  Yet somehow, I found myself on first base.  I don’t remember exactly how I got there.  I’m guessing it was the result of one of my patented “swinging bunts”, where I swung as hard as I could, but I barely hit the ball, resulting in it dribbling about twenty feet away from home plate.  I would then run to first base before anybody could pick up the ball and throw me out.
 
So, here I am on first base.  For some reason, one of the coaches wasn’t there, so we had another player acting as first base coach.  He told me to take a bigger lead, which means to stand further away from first base, giving the runner (me) an advantage to get to second.
 
Let us take time out for a bit of history…
 

In the younger leagues, the rules were that you couldn’t steal a base.  I mean heck, it’s hard enough for a 7-year-old kid to throw the ball from the pitcher’s mound to home plate.  It’d take an 7-year-old on steroids to throw a kid out trying to steal second base.
 
Our team was in a higher division now, so stealing was allowed.  The year that I didn’t play was the first year our team was in this division.  So, I pretty much missed all of the lessons about taking leads, how far away from the base you want to stand, how to tell when a pitcher will throw to first or pitch to the batter and most importantly, how to slide.  I knew none of these things.
 
Before the season started, me and my friends were playing baseball on our own.  I decided I’d try to slide into second base.  Heck, I’ve seen it done plenty of times on TV, how hard could it be?  So, I slid into second base… and I tore my pants and had a big raspberry on my thigh for three weeks.  I think it’s safe to say that I didn’t do it right.
 

Okay, back to live action!
 
Due to this lack of knowledge, I really didn’t want to try to steal and I REALLY didn’t want to slide.  Regardless, I took a step away from first and the teammate/first base coach whispered, “Further out”, as if he wanted me to steal.  I’m not sure why he was whispering, since the first baseman was standing in between him and me.  I nervously took another step away.
 
“A little further”, he whispered.  I took another step… then another 1/2 step.  By this time, I’m standing about half way to second base.  The pitcher turns and throws to first base.  I scramble back but get tagged out before I get anywhere near the base.  I walk back to the dugout and my team is wondering what the heck I was doing out there.
 
I told them that our teammate/first base coach told me to stand way out there, but they pretty much looked at me like I just told them I was part of the Goonies and I was searching for pirate treasure.  Doggone my teammates.
 
To the surprise of no one… my career total of stolen bases = 0
 

Pitching… by definition only - Having a left-handed pitcher is a valuable commodity for a successful baseball team.  Usually, left-handed batters have a hard time hitting against left-handed pitchers.  Same goes for right-handed batters/pitchers.  If you’re a lefty and can consistently get right-handed batters out, you can go far in this game called “baseball”.
 
However, having a left-handed pitcher that can’t get the ball over the plate apparently isn’t quite as valuable.  My pitching career lasted one game.  Actually, it lasted one inning.  As a matter of fact, I don’t even think I finished that inning.
 
I was about nine years old.  There was a rule in our league that a pitcher could only walk one batter with the bases loaded.  After that, no other batter could walk until the bases were unloaded.  So, the pitcher could roll the ball to home plate and throw pitches at cars driving past the baseball diamond and the batter wouldn’t get a walk.
 
Our team was winning something like 375-2, so my dad (who was coaching my team at the time) figured we had a safe enough lead to bring me in to see if I could pitch.  In my first pitching performance, I managed to get an out, but I gave up a couple of hits and then walked two batters in a row, walking in a run.  The next batter was one of my brother’s friends and he wasn’t very good.

Then again, neither was I.
 
If my memory serves me right, this at-bat lasted about… 1/2 an hour.  Pitches were flying all over the place with pretty much all of them out of the strike zone.  The batter was apparently good enough to lay off my pitches that just missed the plate by four or five feet.  Whenever I did get a pitch over the plate, the kid would swing feebly at it, but he would foul it off to stay alive.  On about the 75th pitch, I struck the kid out.  YAY ME!
 
I then proceeded to give up about 255 runs until my dad took me out of the game.
 

 
Thus ends part two of this three part saga.  As you can see, we are grasping higher and higher rungs on the Inept Ladder.  And yet, we haven’t even come close to reaching the top.  And believe me, we’ll be visiting the top and then some.
 
In our final part, we will delve into three baseball-related events that probably haven’t happened elsewhere in the history of… well, the world.
 
Next time!  On Dramamine Boy’s Xanga!

Time for another episode of…

I’ve been a fan of baseball for quite some time.  Sure, games can be a bore sometimes and 162 games in a season makes for a long, long season.  But, I find baseball fascinating and it’s a joy to go down to the ballpark to watch a game.  Oh sure, I can get all flowery here like others do about baseball, spouting off poetry about the interaction between the batter and pitcher, how the pauses in between pitches allow fans to soak in the atmosphere and how it builds drama and tension, blah blah blah.
 
Instead, we like to keep it simple here at Dramamine Boy’s Xanga…
 
Dram.  Baseball.  Like.
 
Now, when it comes to PLAYING baseball, I will readily admit… I suck.  I suck at baseball.  I started playing on a baseball team at age six.  I played on our team every year except for one until the ninth grade.  And I sucked every year.
 
There is a system that baseball scouts use to rate a baseball player.  It is called, “The Five Tools”.  They grade players on each of these five aspects of baseball ability and the ones that score high in all five categories usually go on to play baseball at the higher levels.
 
The five tools are:
 
 - Hitting for average
 - Hitting for power
 - Running speed
 - Fielding ability
 - Arm strength
 
As you can guess, I possessed none of these tools.  Well, I could do all of those things… and I’m sure I’d rate pretty high if you compared my skills to any two-year old’s (okay… most two-year old’s).  But when compared to kids my own age, I was rather lacking.  While some of my teammates had “fine, craftsman-like” tools, my tools were more of the “using a rock to hammer a nail” variety.
 
Anyway, I was so bad at baseball, that this episode of Not-So-Great Moments in Dramamine Boy’s History has to be separated into three parts.  Why three parts?  Cuz if I’m gonna look stupid on the internet, I might as well milk it for a few blogs.
 
I thought the best way to break these up would be into three categories… The Tame, The Bad and The Embarrassing.  I’ll start with The Tame, so hopefully by the time I get to the embarrassing ones, I’ll come to my senses and leave the country instead of sharing them.
 

However, if you thought these were bad, I can’t even fathom what you’re going to think about the upcoming “Dram butchers baseball” events.
 
Stay tuned for more tales of the inept.