December 18, 2006

•  Not-So Great Moments in Dramamine Boy’s History
   
  Baseball – A Tragedy in Three Parts
   
  Part II – The Bad
  

  
  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!
  

  • 3:37 am
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