The Face Behind The Mask

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Thaiss 2015

“You have to have a catcher because if you don’t you’re likely to have a lot of passed balls.” ~ Casey Stengel

In 1876, Fred Thayer, the team manager of Harvard’s baseball team, took a fencing mask, tinkered with it, and turned it into baseball’s first catcher’s mask. It didn’t take long for other catchers to catch on.

Thayer patent

Thayer’s original catcher’s mask patent.

Fans, according to The New York Times, hated the innovation, considering a protective mask a sign of weakness. They jeered at catchers who wore them.  (Batting helmets? Shin guards? Thumb protectors? Today’s game would drive our great-great-great grandparents nutty.)

The mask annoyed fans, but it changed the game. It allowed catchers to be much closer to the batter. It allowed pitchers to amp up their pitches without worrying about killing their catcher with an errant throw.

By 1878, Spalding had added it to their sporting goods’ catalog.

spalding

Goat hair and dog skin. $3.

Today’s best masks can run to more than $100. (Which, if you ask me, is a pretty small price to pay to keep your nose, cheekbone, and brain intact.) No more dog skin either. Progress.

It’s hard to know what’s going on behind those “tools of ignorance.” It’s hard to see a catcher’s face, especially way out in the bleachers.

Thaiss 2016

Matt Thaiss, gritty catcher for the University of Virginia, is tough as nails.

“He won’t give up,” UVA pitcher Alec Bettinger told The Daily Progress last week. “He could have his legs chopped off and he’d still go out there and catch. He’s just the toughest guy on the team.”

But, sometimes, when you look inside the mask …

Matt Thaiss March 2016

… he seems almost angelic.

Which just goes to show …

I don’t really know what it goes to show.  But, sometimes the face you find behind a mask isn’t always the face you expected to find.

In response to the Word Press Daily Post Photo Challenge: Face. See more challenge photos here.

Photos: University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia. 2015-2016 © The Baseball Bloggess

 

“Bartolo Has Done It … The Impossible Has Happened!”

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We live in a weird world.

I don’t even have to explain that thought, do I? You’ve already run with it in your head. Weird politics. Weird weather. Weird AL East standings.

al east standings

Look who’s first!

Weird weirdness all the way “wround.”

But then, Mets’ starting pitcher Bartolo Colon, known on this blog as My Metropolitan Dumpling, does something beyond weird. He does something extraordinary. He does something that no other ballplayer has ever done.

Last night, at age 42, he became the oldest major leaguer to hit his very first home run.

It was real and it was spectacular.

“Bartolo has done it! The impossible has happened!”

Just when you think the world is going to hell in a hand basket which means … I don’t even know what that means …

But, here. Let’s watch it again in Spanish.

“Hasta la vista, baby!”

That home run trot took some 30 seconds. He earned every slow, savoring step of it.

Colon, a career .092 hitter, will be 43 on May 24. He’s a fun and joyful presence whenever he plays. (He almost makes me think the designated hitter rule was a mistake after all.)

Bartolo Colon, my Metropolitan dumpling, hit a home run last night.

It just sounds right, doesn’t it?

Maybe this world is going to be ok after all.

Or, maybe not. But, at least we can watch this over and over again until it is.

 

We Were Perfect That Way

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When I was still pretty small, I had irritated my mom for something lousy I had done and, in her frustration, she snapped, “Don’t get me anything for Mother’s Day.”

A smarter kid might have recognized that what a mom sometimes says is not exactly what she means.

A smarter kid.

I was not that smarter kid. I took the money I was saving up for her gift, went to Woolworth’s, and bought myself a record. I can’t remember which one, but it’s entirely possible that it was this …

 

I was cold shouldered for days. I’m sure she was disappointed in me. It wouldn’t be the last time.

But, to my credit, I never missed another Mother’s Day – including this one, the ninth since she passed away.

I wish I could tell you that my mom and I were ever-warm and loving, like sisters really, and gardened together and cooked together and sewed together and did those things that moms and daughters often do.

We weren’t. We didn’t.

Mom and Me

Sure, we got along. Sometimes.

We fought a lot and rolled our eyes at each other and slammed doors in frustration and disagreed on more things than we agreed on.

But, at the end of the day, we were satisfied that she was probably the only mother, and I was probably the only daughter, who could put up with the other.

We were perfect that way.

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Rainy Day Review: “The Iowa Baseball Confederacy”

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“There is no urgency to the game. Even in the pouring rain, there is the same easy lethargy of a sunstruck afternoon where bodies are bathed in sweat rather than rainwater.” ~ W.P. Kinsella, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy

I wrote about rain delays a week ago. It has rained here in Virginia every day since.

It is raining now.

The grass has grown up over my ankles and gone to seed, but it’s too wet to mow. The garden is a square box of mud, but it’s too wet to sow.

wheres gnomie

© The Baseball Bloggess

The grass has even overgrown the garden gnomes.

Everything’s a little slimy. My hair is rain-flattened and the screen door at our house has swollen itself shut. There is, I am not kidding, a palm-sized frog now living in a mud puddle in the middle of our road.

The rain on the tin roof at my studio in town has gone from “I love the sound of rain on a tin roof” to incessant and aggravating.

Baseball goes on in most other places. But, nothing much is going on around here.

It’s cold and wet and dreary and a little sad outside. It’s a good day to curl up with a book.

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“Due To Weather & Field Conditions …”

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Rain Out in Richmond

On Friday, I wrote about rain delays and rain outs.

Two days later, what are the chances?

Game Postponed May 1 2016

Seriously?

Maybe I jinxed today’s game …

Tarps on the Field

… Because it was pouring rain by the time we got to Richmond.

Superstitions and jinxes like this run deep in baseball.

Charms On The Ball Field NYTelegraph 1910

New York Telegraph, 1910

In the early years of baseball, players would bury all sorts of lucky charms – especially rabbits’ feet – under home plate and all over the outfield.

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Your Rain Delay Companion

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Nationals Giants Rain Delay 8 23 2014

© The Baseball Bloggess

Three things you should know about rain:

1. One billion tons of rain falls on the earth every minute. One billion.  (Fortunately, an equal amount evaporates somewhere else, so things even out and the earth doesn’t explode like a water balloon.)

2. Falling rain can reach speeds of up to 22 miles per hour. (So can Reds outfielder Billy Hamilton.)

3. I don’t know when your game’s rain delay is going to end.

In October 2012, I sat through a cold, 2-hour-41-minute rain delay in Baltimore. The Orioles were playing the Yankees in the playoffs – it marked the O’s first post-season appearance in 15 years.

Fun Fact: Rain Delays don't last forever. Fun Fact #2: Rally Towels are very absorbent.

© The Baseball Bloggess

Rally Towels. Very Absorbent.

After all the rain delaying, it was nearly midnight when the two teams, knotted at 2, entered the 9th. And then, Orioles closer Jim Johnson gave up five runs. Five.

Including this one …

Embed from Getty Images

Ack.

The Orioles lose 7-2 and go on to lose the division series. It still hurts.

I wrote about that night here: How To Enjoy Your Next Rain Delay. 

Ever since, this blog gets a spike in visitors whenever rain stops a big game. Earlier this month, the Orioles’ three-hour double-delay during their home opener on April 4, and the Washington Nationals’ 85-minute delay during their home opener on April 7, led to a downpour of impatient wet fans turning to the googler to tell them when the stoppages would finally stop.

Over the past few years, all kinds of questions and queries have led people to my rain delay post.  I’m going to go ahead and clear those questions up now.

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“Seeing Home” on Only A Game

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I have to be at my office by 8 on some Saturday mornings. Those are Saturday mornings that might otherwise be filled with sleeping in and lazy breakfasts and reading the box score from Friday night where my team wins …

Orioles final

Nope. 

uva over miami

Look! Virginia beat #1 ranked Miami last night. How about that!

But, when I’m up and out early on Saturday, I get to listen to the sports program Only A Game on National Public Radio during my drive to the studio.

Almost every week I hear a story and think, “I really wish you could hear this.” And, by “you,” I really do mean you – whoever you are. I mean “you” … everybody.

Today’s show deserves your ears.

Ed Lucas has interviewed ballplayers since the 1950s.  And, as Only A Game explains: “Ed has been completely blind since October 3, 1951. He lost his sight after taking a line drive to the head on the same day his beloved New York Giants won the pennant.”

Ed Lucas and Willie Mays

Only A Game

Ed Lucas Interviewing Willie Mays in 1957.

“Friendships between writers and ballplayers aren’t common,” Only A Game notes, “but in baseball broadcaster Ed Lucas, players saw someone who had struggled as hard as they had — if not harder — to get to where he was.”

Ed Lucas’ story is a story of … how, as a small boy and newly blind, he met Yankee Phil Rizzuto, who took him under his wing … how Leo Durocher opened the Giants’ clubhouse doors to him, as a favor to Ed’s mom who thought a visit with baseball players would cheer him up … and of how his life blossomed despite blindness. It is a story of baseball and of family.  It is beautiful.

You can listen to, or download, the story here.

only a game

 

The Future Of Baseball

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“You could be a kid for as long as you want when you play baseball.” ~ Cal Ripken, Jr.

Seeing kids play baseball is like reliving your own life when you were a kid. You look at them out there in the grass and it reminds you of something you did during a game a long time ago. (Like dropping the easy fly ball to right. Yup, sometimes the memories are harsh ones.)

But, sometimes you can look at a kid out there in the grass, playing a kid’s game, and you can see the future. Their future.

You can watch a four-year-old kid on the diamond and you can see the game Babe Ruth played nearly 100 years ago. You can see the first game you ever went to. You can see the first ball you ever held in your hand and you can remember exactly how it felt, exactly how it smelled.

Embed from Getty Images

Babe Ruth, 1932

You can watch that same four-year-old kid on the mound and you can wonder where his future will take him.

Or, you can invent his future. And, it’s always a good one. And, he never drops the ball.

It was Grant’s birthday when I found him and his dad playing baseball. It was, his dad told me, the only thing he wanted to do on his birthday … play ball. That was a couple years ago. The original post is here.

Grant didn’t know me and he didn’t pay any attention to me. He didn’t pose. He just played.

I haven’t seen him since.

To see a four-year-old love the game is also to see our future. And, there’s still baseball in it. Whew.

ballplayer

In response to the Word Press Daily Post Photo Challenge: Future. See more challenge photos here.

 

Happy New Year!

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happy new year schoop“Baseball isn’t necessarily an escape from reality, though it can be; it’s merely one of our many refuges within the real where we try to create a sense of order on our own terms. Born to an age where horror has become commonplace, where tragedy has, by its monotonous repetition, become a parody of sorrow, we need to fence off a few parks where humans try to be fair, where skill has some hope of reward, where absurdity has a harder time than usual getting a ticket.” ~ Thomas Boswell, 1984

Happy New Year! May your team play hard, win often, keep a ready bullpen, and always recover quickly from bottom-of-the-9th, two-out, tying-run-on-third heartbreakers.

Thank you to those many people who made me both love and understand baseball, including Thomas Boswell and his Washington Post columns, and my friends Jay, Jim, Renee, and Editor/Husband Randy who will sit through long rain delays, and games played through sleet, cold, my bouts of heat exhaustion in summer, leaky bullpens, and late-inning meltdowns in the outfield.

This is our year.

I’ll see you at the game … or I’ll see you in  November.  Play ball!

(Oh, almost forgot. Go O’s.)

Photo: A’s at Orioles, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, August 16, 2015. © The Baseball Bloggess

My Experts Predict The 2016 World Series

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I’m on to you, Sports Illustrated. You’re picking the Houston Astros over the Chicago Cubs in the World Series just to be quirky. You’re going with hipster picks – just a little off the beaten path, but still kinda making sense. Good for you.

You went quirky last season, too, picking the Cleveland Indians when everyone else was certain it was the Washington Nationals’ year.

You didn’t pick the Royals. No one did.

You all make a living knowing baseball and you still get it wrong.

That’s why, once again, I turn to my own panel of experts – those who admit they have no real knowledge of baseball – to help me pick the 2016 World Series champion.

Sure, go with the ‘Stros if you must. Or, come with my experts.

You want quirky?

Let’s settle this.

AMERICAN LEAGUE

AL East ~ Clinton picks the Red Sox

Clinton is a handyman who does lots of fix-it jobs around the building where I have my massage studio in Madison, Virginia. Last year he replaced all the aging and water-stained ceiling tiles in my studio, which may seem like a small thing to you, except when you realize that the average massage client spends a fair amount of their time looking up at the ceiling.

I’m pretty sure the entire building would fall apart without him.

Clinton was, as always, busy working when I stopped him to help me choose an AL East winner. He’s not a baseball fan, he’s all football and roots for that team from Washington.

Why the Red Sox? Clinton may not know that the Red Sox play in Boston, but he does know that his mother is a Red Sox fan, so he picked them for her. (This is especially sweet, because, if you remember last year’s experts, Andrew chose the Red Sox because they were his mother’s favorite team. Based on this anecdotal evidence, I believe that the Red Sox are the favorite team of every mom in America.)

AL Central ~ Parker picks the Detroit Tigers

I met Parker at the local grocery store where he was feeding the goats.

What? Your local grocery store doesn’t have a barnyard of goats? Well, aren’t you all fancy pants with your city-slicker Smart Water in bottles and 20 kinds of Oreos …

Stevie Drinks Smart Water

“I used to be a dog until I drank SmartWater.”

Parker is in first grade and plays first base and pitches for his local Little League team. When I asked him the name of his team he said he couldn’t remember, but I think he was just afraid I would show up at his game on Saturday if he told me.

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