December 26, 2006

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

   
  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.
   

  
  Fielding, Part II –
   
  
   
  Okay, so here’s a picture of me playing baseball.  Let’s ignore the fact that I’m left-handed and I’m playing shortstop.  Generally, there are zero left-handed players playing shortstop on any team in the world.  It has to do with fielding grounders to my right (hard to get momentum to throw to first base from that spot) and other baseball-technical stuff that I’m trying to show that I know, when in fact, I’m pretty much clueless.  These rules do not apply to me anyway, since I rarely caught any ball hit to me no matter where it was, nor did I throw the ball anywhere near the first baseman if I did happen to catch it.
   
  Instead, notice the rather unique fielding position I’m in.  Now, if you take a look at Cal Ripken Jr., this is his fielding position:
   
  
   
  And heck, if you take a look at pretty much any infielder in the history of the game, they’re in the same fielding position.  Not me, baby.  I’m sure you’re wondering, “Dram, why are you using this different stance?  Have you discovered a totally revolutionary way of playing shortstop?  Does this stance give you an advantage over certain types of plays at shortstop that the conventional stance does not?”
   
  And my answer to this is… “Uhhhh… yeah, that’s what it was”.
   
  The actual answer is… on a baseball glove, they have leather strips that are tied in a knot to hold parts of the glove together.  You can see some of these untied leather strips dangling from Lupus’ glove in the first part of this series.  One such tie is on the top of my glove in the picture above.  The loose ends of the knot curved upward from the edge of the glove like so:
   
  (_____)
   
  If you look really, really close, you might be able to make out those strands.  I’m not sure how I discovered this, but I thought that looked kinda like an aiming sight for a gun.  So, I lined up the hitter inside those “sights”, so I guess you could say that I’m “aiming” my glove at the hitter like a gun.  Heck, I might’ve even made gun sounds while I was out there.
   
  So, looking back at the previous photograph, I believe we can alter it to:
   
  
   
  This revolutionary new approach to fielding didn’t last long.  As I recall, I used this stance for a game or two until someone hit a ball off my shin.

  
   
  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.

  • 4:22 am
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