Reese Kaplan -- How Soon Will They Yell, "Play Ball"?

A group of us whiny baseball fanatics were taking over a conference room on the topic d’jour regarding the seemingly never-to-begin Spring Training as most of us are already out of the gridiron post-season rooting and the Harperless Washington Nationals’ victory feels like something from the Dark Ages.  There was surprisingly even some good dialogue about the NY Mets (considering out here in El Paso we had the nerve to complain about the temperature dipping below 60 degrees). 

What made the riffs of the roundball raconteurs so fascinating is that we all grew up in different areas under different influences (and in different eras of the game’s evolution).  Still, we managed to connect on a variety of horsehide planes despite our unmatched cultures, locales and appreciation for the 9 innings of a standard game. 

One area in which we all had tales to tell concerned our fledgling efforts to play this very fine game.  Nearly all had participated in some kind of organized Little League effort to become ballplayers.  Some withered at that level.  Others moved onto JV and varsity efforts in high school.  Some made it as far as college teams, while others regaled us with their stories of a transition to the slower and fatter softball (a game which often allowed or even featured the inclusion of adult suds on the playing field). 

Everyone had some kind of moment of heroism of their own individual exploits or pure horror of humiliation when they realized they were overmatched.  It’s hard to give justice to anyone’s chronicled exploits without knowing the person, but I’ll share one of my own during our first unified gym class in high school when both male and female athletes were expected to share the playing field.  In our first game a woman (who shall remain nameless in this anecdote) was the fantasy partner of just about every boy on the field.  She was given pitching duties and it was a modified fast-pitch softball delivery that actually rendered a few of our better athletes less potent and more K-prone than you would have expected.

As a ballplayer I batted righthanded in an overly closed stance which gave me a tendency to drive nearly everything to right field.  The harder the pitcher, the more likely I would look like a lefty pull hitter.  Although I played occasional softball with friends, I never like the looping slow-pitch delivery of the pitcher, so I was actually looking forward to her fast-pitch underhand delivery. 

Softball being what it is, a fast-pitch is a relative thing and this seeming clone of a lefty pull hitter instead smacked a sizzling line drive right back up the middle that I feared would decapitate the pitcher when, instead of fielding it, she took it squarely on the temple.  She was removed from the field by stretcher while I was sheepishly standing on second base with arguably the world’s shortest double since everyone stopped what they were doing in the game and properly went to see the extent of the damage. 

Many years later at a party where it was actually legal to drink adult beverages I ran into her and apologized for the incident.  She said she was the one who was unable to face her teammates and friends for years having been zonked out so completely on a liner up the middle.  She didn’t blame me at all for doing what I was supposed to have done – hit the ball hard.  While that certainly assuaged many years of shame and guilt for what I did, frankly I would have preferred the culmination of every high school boy’s fantasy in having it all resolve with a romantic encounter, but timing was never my thing and it didn’t come to pass.

One of the great ironies, of course, is that we writers, stockbrokers, carpenters and others who went onto adult lives without a leather glove and wooden bat, are not that all different from the guys about to head to Florida and Arizona to fight their ways into significant roles in the major leagues.   The difference for them, of course, is national and international recognition, big dollars and the fulfillment of a childhood dream of playing a game for their livelihood.

I can’t wait to hear the sound of the pitched ball smacking the catcher’s glove, the wooden bat slamming a poorly located pitch and the fans cheering every little thing for the duration of the game.  Play ball!