Tag Archives: MLB

Game Seven (Classics Never Die)

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I’ll do my best at some play by play.  The NLCS (National League Correctional Series) wait…..I just got out of there……I mean the National League Champion Series is currently being played.  That’s baseball to those meatheads watching their fantasy knuckle heads get concussed.

Steroids . . . they do a body good.

The San Francisco Giants are displaying their October costumes.  Orange and Black.  They have worn them for years, but it seems appropriate while approaching the Fall Classic.  Hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals, Mark McGuire did not receive the “it’s not Halloween” memo as he is clearly posing as someone who is not currently taking steroids.  Ding dong.  “Trick or treat”.

“You look strangely thin, young man.  Who are you supposed to be?”

“Mark McGuire.”

“Oh that’s cute…..let me inject this Milky Way into your butt.  You’ll have biceps, triceps and acne for years.  Just don’t tell your wife.  She’ll be concerned about your shrinking baseballs.”

The opening ceremony was just as painful as expected.  Whoever butchered the National Anthem needs to know that free and brave are separate words…….in some particular order.  I give up.

There is a guy named Scutaro playing for the Giants.  He used to play for the minor league team, The Sun City Muppets.  His abilities have far exceeded those of puppets without legs.

Residential Nazi, Matt Holliday, seems disgruntled.  Let’s go to a commercial break.

Five hour energy drink?  I don’t need one.  I’ll take a scooter O for the road.

Scooter just lined one into right field for his second hit.  This Muppet can really hit.  Now a cartoon character known as Kung Fu Panda (Pablo Sandoval) just came to bat and lined one into left field putting runners on the corners.  Excuse me, second and third.  Another fictional character posing as Buster is at bat.  He looks like he’s twelve years of age, but his mom says he’s almost twenty, and he hits you just like puberty.  You just can’t determine when he’s going to embarrass the pitcher.

The bases are now loaded with Scooter at third, Kung Fu at second and Buster posing as himself at first.  Where is number 8 when you need him?  Number 8 just cleared the bases.  I can’t keep up with this.  Where is soccer when I need him?  This game is too fast. I need a zero zero tie!  Baseball is supposed to be slow and boring.  I’m switching to Monday Night Foolsball.  I need a Hank Williams Jr. Fix.  Who is playing?

I’ll catch up in the seventh inning stretch.

Wait, the football game broke into another fight with helmets and face masks.  Boring.  Men breaking their knuckles on plastic head bowls doesn’t impress me.  This pitcher hitting for the Giants with the bases loaded does impress me……until……we have to wait….he struck out.

My wife just called me so I have to act like I’m putting the sheets in the dryer.  I use fans and “I can’t hear you” noises to distract her.  She thinks I should be writing, doing laundry and watching baseball at the same time.  Who is the crazy person in this family?  It ain’t the dogs and cats.  They are currently folding clothes.  Stupid, but not crazy.

Seven to Zero in favor of the Giants.  If my mother is watching The Waltons right now, I will be forced to not send her a Mother’s Day Card.  She loves The Waltons more than baseball.  That’s certifiable.  They are a fictional family for crying “Goodnight Johnboy” out loud!  What decade is this?  My mother just informed me the Waltons are painting their house!  What color?!!  I don’t care!  Back to the game.

Commercial Break:  Cialis.

Here’s something interesting. Oh dear.  The Giants are warming up another character.  He is in the bullpen, but the only name we’ve heard or read about comes from a Monty Python Movie.   They call him, “Tim”.

As a former betting man, I will bless or irritate the  baseball betting Gods by writing, “it is over”.  Catastrophically more disturbing, since the baseball game looks as though it’s over, I have lowered myself and degraded my principles by changing channels, not to the football game, but the Presidential Debate.  Did I just capitalize that as though they were proper nouns?  I’m going back to the game I love.  Not the political games I hate.

My wife is watching ABC, and I am fighting her over the foreign policy remote.  This is ridiculous.

God Bless America, God Bless Concussions, God Bless Baseball, and well, soccer, I will just pray for your sport to grow arms.  That will be a miracle.

On the Seventh Day, God Created a Blowout, and then He skipped the eighth day due to a rain delay, and on the ninth day, He created Baseball.

Genesis:  10 13 73

The Best and Worst day of a Boy’s Life (the cub scout eye test)

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This is a story about a young, naive baseball player; One who was too young to have recognized the sadness this wonderful game could provide.

I was playing pool on a Friday night with one of my best friends, Andy,  when I got the call.  The call was from my father.  That always made me a bit nervous.  It turned out to be the most exhilarating moment of my life.  My father called me to tell me a Chicago Cub’s scout had flown into Spokane and wanted to meet me and my father at a local hotel.  I remember looking at my friend, Andy, and he could tell I was bursting with happiness.  He said, “what the heck?….What’s going on?”  I told him the Cubs are in town to see me.  (One of the many great things about my friend was when I told him that, he looked like he was even more excited than me).  He said, “well let’s get your ass to that hotel……you really are on your way to the show.”

My father and I met this scout at the hotel, and at eighteen very young years of life, my hopes of making it to the major leagues were shattered.  I’m a pretty good judge of reading people.  That scout gave me his official Cub’s card and looked me up and down like I was a race horse or on a trading block.

I had terrific baseball stats, but I was not a tall or big boy.  It was then when I realized my destiny was not to get to that top level of play.  This is extremely scary to a boy who thought, with great confidence, it’s not if I’m going to make it, it’s when I’m going to make it.  Well, I didn’t even come close.

The second eye test was through a view finder.  He asked me if I wore corrective lenses.  I said yes.  STRIKE TWO!  The interview ended with this.  “We’ll keep in contact with you”. That was strike three for me.  Even at eighteen, I wasn’t really a dummy.

The car was silent on the drive home.   I was the kid who slept with a Dodger’s batting helmet on my head.  I had a baseball bat glued to my hand since I was about four years old.  I could emulate the swing of every major league player since 1977.  So, what was terrifying me was the thought of “What the hell am I going to do now?”  What are my other options?  Do I become a Cowboy or an Indian?  I knew my dream was over.

Draft day was strike four.  Many friends and relatives were questioning me as to what round I would be drafted.  After meeting with that scout, I knew.  But, many loving people payed  attention to that day of drafting, and my name was never mentioned.  I disappointed many people who thought that’s where I belonged.

I did receive a scholarship to play college baseball, but I knew that was not where I belonged.  I succeeded one year and failed miserably the second.  Officially, my baseball career was over.  I think I cried, but I can’t truly remember.

Let’s set this record straight, I did NOT belong to play at that level.  I have no excuses.  I was good, but clearly not that good.  Dozens of times, people have asked me, “why didn’t you make it?…..what happened?”  Now, the usual response of an ex-hopeful professional athlete is something along the lines of,  “Well my shoulder went out on me”, but I always tell old friends, ” I just wasn’t good enough”.  That’s the truth.  No excuses.  This is a physically and mentally tough game.

Writing is even tougher, but that’s all I have left.  That and a nice wife, and a very fortunate life.

After many years, I couldn’t watch a ballgame.  I felt betrayed by countless years of swinging a bat.  I have since forgiven the game and have become a teacher of baseball.   My only remaining sadness is that my wife never saw me play centerfield.  Fortunately, we go to many ballgames and I enjoy describing what a player should do in certain situations.  I quiz her on how to execute the next play.  “What should he do here….bunt, swing away…..make certain he is unselfish and hit a sacrificial fly?”  It makes this game fun again.  Even our dogs appreciate the countless fly balls I hit them for retrieval.

I’m lucky I didn’t make it.  I wouldn’t be where I am today.

Take me out to a ballgame….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Diamond in the Rough (The Painfully Slow Evolution of a Baseball Team)

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There are four measurements on a diamond: cut, clarity, color, and carrot.  There are four measurements on a baseball field: hitting, throwing, running and catching.  Both are measured in terms of perfection when it comes to a ring or the baseball field.

Talking to a scientist the other day, he informed me that a piece of crap, or a piece of coal, can turn into a diamond with enough pressure and time after several thousand years.  This was sad news.  Immortality is not my business.  He also informed me that diamonds are extremely costly.  I already knew that, but I questioned him further by asking why diamonds are just as expensive as going to a Seattle Mariner’s Baseball game.  He laughed at me and replied, “That’s why they call the field a diamond…..it’s really expensive, because it’s a place to witness perfection.”  Still shaking my head in disbelief, just like a child asks questions to an adult they can’t possibly answer, I asked “Don’t the Mariners play on a field then?”  My business is asking rhetorical questions.  My scientist friend knew he could not answer this question.  Therefore, I answered it for him.

Here we go.  “You see, scientist friend, when I grew up, I played on baseball fields.  These fields were plagued with weeds and gigantic rocks almost resembling erratics from the Great Missoula Floods.  The stands were filled with angry fathers not volunteering their time but volunteering their mouths during a game littered with nice kids, but crappy ballplayers.  There were these unusual ladies also showing up giving little advice, other than, “who is in charge of the treats at the next game?” Later on, I found out they were mothers.  I found it strange they didn’t even watch the game.  They did their nails, gossiped, and spoke evilly of their estranged husbands.  But, what baffled me the most was when their son struck out in four consecutive at bats on twelve consecutive pitches, the mother would hand him a soda, or a drumstick or a fruit roll up and say, “Wow, you were terrific today!”  Now if you say that to a real ballplayer after striking out, it adds kindling to the campfire.  It might smell good, but it still burns like hell.  So, the only proper thing to do as a real ballplayer is to toss the soda over a fence, beat one of your other crappy teammates with the drumstick and refrain from strangling your mother with the fruit roll up.  Then you head home and sneak a beer out of your father’s hidden stash in the basement.

Mr Scientist seemed to be getting bored with my explanation, so he wanted me to reach my point.  So, I told him that diamonds are supposed to be beautiful.  Since a field represents a little league ballpark, a baseball diamond should be saved for when you make it to the big leagues…….you know, like the guys I used to watch on T.V. and admired since I left the womb.  Those guys deserved to play on a Baseball Diamond.  The Seattle Mariners have a dynamite field, but let’s not go too far as to refer to it as a diamond.

I’ve been watching these guys play for 35 years.  If it takes another one thousand years to see them in the World Series, I’m clean out of luck.  This chunk of coal doesn’t have that much time to see a diamond, unless it’s on my wife’s finger.  I see that every day.

With all this being written atop my soap baseball box, I’m on my way to go see a chunk of coal on a baseball field at Keep me Safeco Field.  I’ll purchase a ticket, buy some Cracker Jacks, a dog and a beer, financing the diamond earrings the players will wear after the game and, hopefully, not become too embarrassed by the mothers and fathers misunderstanding the process of how long it takes a coal turn into a diamond.

That’s how much I love the game.

 

 

Baseball Magic

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For those of you who don’t care for baseball and find it extraordinarily boring, you missed history last night.  I even missed some of it.  Everyone knows of players such as Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, and Roger Maris, but we only see them in museums, or read books from the past or perhaps just hear old stories from a father who loves the game.  Last night, I witnessed a part of history (fun history) I will be capable of telling a son or a grandchild about. It was an evening I wish I could have shared with my late father.

There is no possible way to go into details regarding everything that occurred last night.  I can only say that when seeing marvelous athletes compete and win, my wife and I looked at each other and collectively said, “Do you have goosebumps?”  Yes.  And it’s not necessarily because of  the team you’re rooting for, it’s sometimes the fans.  These teams and fans come together as a team and a family.  I’m not limiting this to baseball.  It can be soccer, football, hockey…..I don’t really care.  What I do care about is seeing people in a stadium hugging someone next to them who they don’t even know.  It gives people a chance to forget. With our economy, there are millions of people who are struggling not only financially, but emotionally.  But if you can forget for a day or even a moment about your stresses, those goosebumps make you laugh, smile and even provide tears of joy.  It was good to see so many people happy.

Regardless of the sport, many people will root for the underdog.  Last night, the underdogs (plural) won.  There was a perfect storm in baseball.  The Yankees lost to the Tampa Bay Rays, thus allowing the Rays in the playoffs.  At one point, The Yankees were up seven to zero in the eighth inning, but somehow, the baseball Gods prevailed and allowed the Rays to come back from this deficit and win in the bottom of the 12th inning on a walk off home run.  The fans blew up with fabulous emotion. The Red Sox lost to the last place Baltimore Orioles, thus eliminating the Sox from the playoffs.  The Atlanta Braves lost a crushing defeat to the Philadelphia Phillies, allowing the St. Louis Cardinals to knock the Braves out of the pennant race and give the Cards, who were at one point, 10 games out of the race to now have a chance to win the coveted World Series.  (This may be a bit confusing for those of you who don’t watch baseball).  I’m even confusing myself.  Ultimately, and most importantly, all of those games being played at roughly the same time, ended in spectacular dramatic and historic fashion within the course of 25 minutes.  We didn’t have enough television sets to watch them all.  Baseball historians have recognized these feats as having never occurred over the course of a century. 

This may sound a bit corny, and off topic, but there is a song by The Doobie Brothers titled, “Listen to the Music”.  I’ve never been around a person who couldn’t laugh, smile or sing along to this happy tune.  Last night, we were listening to the music.

Baseball, while sometimes boring, can bring strangers together, whether you know the game or not, in a very positive  way.  And, it can be magical.