Tuesday, February 14, 2006
INCOHERENT BASEBALL RANT
[let me preface this by saying I had no idea where this was going other than that it had to do with baseball]
Baseball. I played organized baseball for eleven years. The earliest memory probably relates to my mom not being able to wash the grass stains out of my pants (1990 Warren Avenue tee-ball represent!). The final memory involves me driving my car around the west side of Bremerton with no real destination after my final game and crying, still in uniform, realizing it was all over. No, I don't care if you call me a wuss for that. I cried more because I wasn't just done playing a sport; this was an 11-year relationship that had just ended for me that late summer in 2000.
Back when I was sixteen, my junior Legion season had just ended, and I attended a baseball camp. A coach there that year by the name of Byron Tait had my group out to the fields in mid-morning after our warmup exercises, and we were ready to practice catches against the outfield wall. Byron picked up a pine tar rag and passed it to the guy next to him, telling us all to basically catch a whiff of it; a smell of baseball, if you will. It seemed cheesy at the time, but his motive was dead on. Baseball is quite sensory.
How is baseball sensory? It is probably so in a billion ways, but I'll just rattle some off, and I'll just keep it to my personal experience to keep it a bit simplified.
I would see the four-wheeler dragging the infield dirt, the chalk machine lining the fields (also the batters box template), the little PVC elbow pipe they had at our field behind the plate so that we'd get our foul balls back into play, the sun that would be in a rightfielder's face since all our high school games started at 3:30, simple games of catch, batting practice, etc. The sounds are ingrained in the culture of our nation. Everyone knows about the crack of the bat (okay, all my organized ball was played with metal bats, but I did park one at Warren Avenue in a sandlot game with a wooden softball bat when I was 18 -- best sound in the world). One can't forget the ball hitting the mitt. There's also the chatter among the dugouts, the encouragement from the coaches, the calls from the umpires, the reactions from the crowd (thank goodness I could filter out individual voices in the crowd when on deck or at the plate), etc. For the sense of touch -- the seams of the baseball, the feeling of a broken-in mitt, the feeling of the bat in your hands, the feeling of just pounding the ball (wish I had that one more), the uncomfortable feeling of sitting on a bucket of balls that had no lid at the time, the feeling of hustling back to the dugout knowing you were due up to bat, the feeling of your spikes hitting pavement out of the field of play and the dugouts, the feeling of the throwing shoulder being sore after the first couple practices of the season, etc. Smells include the aforementioned pine tar as well as that grass/mud smell that comes from trying to hold the first few practices of the season way early and hoping the field wasn't too wet. There's also the freshly cut grass, the smell of hot dogs that would leak over to the dugout, the smell of dirt when the infield was first being dragged (quick and forced exhale afterward), the smell of grass stains on the knees after you just slid for a ball in the outfield, etc. This leaves taste, which I guess can go for anything we had while in the field or the dugout -- sunflower seeds, bubble gum, Gatorade/All Sport/Powerade, beef jerky, and the like (I didn't do chaw, and you can thank the late Bill Tuttle for that).
As I sit here typing this, pitchers and catchers of the Seattle Mariners are mere hours away from reporting to Peoria, Arizona, for spring training. For a single guy that's spent a huge majority of Valentine's days without a significant other, February 14th to me has always signified that "pitchers and catchers report" was coming around the bend. As for where we left off, I've been over here in Virginia for the entire offseason, and I did completely miss the last two games of the 2005 season, though I know I didn't miss much. I'll be back in Hawaii (barring unforeseen circumstances) when the 2006 regular season starts, sure, but just the phrase "pitchers and catchers report" just reminds me of one thing -- I'm only a month and a half away from having the greatest addiction on earth almost every night for the span of six months or more. The game is there every night. Even when I was busy playing in games of my own, the first thing that happened in the car before we got going was that the Mariners were dialed in to the radio.
Baseball. An old friend returns. Granted, the month and a half of fluff pieces is less than desired, but eventually the season comes, the bunting comes out, the national anthem is sung, ESPN shows its Opening Day septuple-header, and the season is underway.
You've reached the end of the post if you've gotten this far. Congratulate yourself and give yourself a pat on the back, because I just got on a roll with the keyboard, and I wasn't going to stop. All I know is that I needed to post this. That's the whole blogging thing -- it's therapeutic, you know.
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