Tag Archives: baseball

Chapter One: Smelly

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© The Baseball Bloggess

Things are different in 2020. They will only get different’er … 

Smelly was small enough that he could turn himself sideways and wedge his shoulder between two of the gate’s metal bars. This allowed him to push his cheek so hard into one metal bar that his ear was almost – almost – inside the park.

This was how Smelly, the little neighborhood kid, listened to baseball.

Smelly? His name?

Smelly didn’t smell bad. Honest.

But, Smelly had the runniest nose in the neighborhood. He was constantly sniffling and snorting and wiping snot into the elbow of his shirt sleeves.

One day, on one of Smelly’s particularly snorty-snotty-runny-nose days, a no-good kid from another block said to him, “You’re a disgusting snothead.”

“I’m not a snothead,” Smelly replied. “I am smelling.” And, he took a long and deep and wet snotty-snorty inhale in the other kid’s direction. “And, I smell you.  And, you stink.”

From that point on, he became Smelly, which was, everyone agreed, a much better name than Snothead.

Smelly would always show up at Baltimore’s Camden Union ballpark on game day early. It was just six blocks away from Smelly’s house, he could run it in five minutes. (Unless he stopped for a bomb pop, which was worth the detour.)

With no fans allowed in, a game could start whenever both teams were ready. A two o’clock game could start at noon … or not until four. It all depended. It didn’t matter.

Daytime games saved the teams money; no need to turn on expensive lights. The game would be broadcast at night or whenever someone called it up on their “HV” Home Viewer. There were no announcers, just trails of information running continually at the bottom of the screen. No one cared that the games weren’t aired live. It didn’t matter.

It mattered to Smelly. Continue reading →

Any Old April

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If this were an ordinary, ho-hum, just-another-April, April …

If this were just a plain ol’ kick-winter-to-the-curb April …

If this were an April, the way Aprils are meant to be … the way they should be … the way they need to be …

There would be baseball.

There would be other things, too. There would be restaurants and movies and the ability to go into stores without worrying that taking one step inside is going to be the one step that tries to kill you.

There would be parties and concerts and – I know I mentioned this already – baseball.

So, here we are, near April’s end and the Baltimore Orioles are undefeated. UN. DE. FEAT. ED. Didn’t see that coming, did you?

For those of you baseball-complainers …

Those who complain … Continue reading →

This Is Not My “Happy Place”

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I shut everything down.

When things shut down around me in the past few days, I knew that mitigating a fast-spreading virus like COVID-19 would mean more than just shuttering all sports, museums, concerts, and big things.

It meant even little businesses like mine should shut down, too.

So, I closed my Yoga studio, cancelled my massage clients. And, here I sit.

Because, isn’t this what it means to “do your part”?

But, if the bars and restaurants and movie theaters are still open and people are still going, am I just wasting my time?

As I said to some of my clients, “I don’t want to see you on Monday and then have to call you on Wednesday and say, ‘Hey! Guess what I just tested positive for?’”

If closing is the right thing to do, why do I feel so terrible about this?

OK, that helped to say all that.

Now that you’ve kindly read through my “stress dump,” we, of course, need to get to the nut of things …

This virus has taken away baseball. It has taken away sports. It has taken away my “Happy Place.” Maybe your “Happy Place,” too.

I have no back-up “Happy Place.”

On Tuesday afternoon – playing hooky – I sat in the stands at the University of Virginia’s Davenport Field in our luxurious new season seats that look straight through home plate and right down the third-base line.

©The Baseball Bloggess

Freshman Max Cotier, on third and thinking about maybe, just maybe, stealing home. He didn’t steal, but he did score. (See, I told you … great seats!)

Virginia beat UMass-Lowell on Tuesday afternoon 24-5.

When it seemed clear that the game would be a major blow-out … and, you know, blow-outs and batting around in multiple innings can take some time (ultimately, three hours and 32 minutes) … we thought about leaving. It was getting late. Continue reading →

If Pearce Chiles Could Talk …

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Allentown PA Leader, 10/4/1900

Pearce Chiles, an infielder/third base coach for the Philadelphia Phillies, was born in 1867 in Deepwater, Missouri. I think it’s fair to say he was an all-around no-goodnik – although thieving miscreant is probably more accurate. Phillies’ backup catcher Morgan Murphy, fellow no-goodnik, devised a system where Murphy, using binoculars, would stand beyond centerfield and steal the signs from the other team’s catcher. Murphy would forward the signs via a telegraph wire buried under the field and connected to a buzzer in the third base coaching box where Chiles stood. The buzzer would vibrate under Chiles’ foot, and he would signal to the batter what pitch was coming.  It was 1900.  

Pearce Chiles

Chiles never spoke publically about the scheme … but if he had …

Those idiots think the DTs ‘smaking my leg twitch.

It ain’t booze.

I hold my likker better ‘n any of ‘em.

Buffoons.

I can stand out here all day in this goddam third base box. And, see, we paid a guy to lay down a wire and it’s buried right here where my right foot stands. I have to stand just so. But, if I do, Murph’ out there just beyond that centerfield point, puts his spyglasses on the other guys’ catcher, and from out there he pushes a button and presto – I get a jolt of pure electricity right through the wire, right to my damn foot.

Mansfield OH News-Journal, 9/19/1900

Curve ball? Fast ball? Murph’s a catcher, he knows all the signs. I know from the buzz he sends me exactly what that pitcher’s gonna throw next.

One buzz, fastball. Two buzzes, something else.

Can you beat that? Continue reading →

And, No One Ever Cheated

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Photo: Kaboompics via Pexels.com

If you remember real hard, you’ll remember.

A moment when life took place above your head.

A summer picnic with mom and dad and all the people from dad’s work, I don’t really know how many.

A lot.

There were hamburgers and hot dogs and jello pops and grownups who got drunk.

And, cold sodas in metal coolers and we’d steal the ice and throw it at each other.

And, each year, a tug of war between the men that everybody waited for.

And after that, down in a mowed field, there was baseball and we children would sit on a hillside and watch our fathers play.

And, no one ever cheated.

And, it never rained on Saturdays.

And, everything was perfect.

Because, my memory say it’s so.

© The Baseball Bloggess, 2019

Buster Keaton. Playing Baseball.

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Silent movies are, well, silent … so you don’t need much from me this morning.

Buster Keaton. 1928. Playing baseball. Yankee Stadium.

(From the movie The Cameraman.)

Look …

 

Hat-tip to @SABRPictorial for finding this gem.

P.S. The Baltimore Orioles have won their last three games. Their last 10 games? They are 7-3. Hoorah. Oh and speaking of Baltimore, don’t believe any of the cruel, hateful, and racist talk you may have heard about Baltimore in the past 24 hours. The Baltimore Sun replied …

All-Star Break: Waiting, Day 4

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© The Baseball Bloggess, 2019

As settlers pushed into the unsettled Great Plains in the 1800s to open the land and start new lives, the harsh living conditions, backbreaking farm work, often deadly weather, and near-constant isolation took an enormous toll, often leading to mental breakdowns. They called it “Prairie Madness.”

So, all things considered, going four days without baseball is really no big thing.

And, on the plus side, the Baltimore Orioles haven’t lost a game in four days. Continue reading →

In Praise Of “Peculiarly Hypnotic Tedium”

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Good news, baseball fans!

All your griping about long and slow baseball games has paid off.

Games are shorter!

Last year the length of the average baseball game dropped – dropped! – to 3 hours and 4 minutes. That’s a savings of 4 minutes per game over 2017.

I hate math, but check out this wizardry …

With a 162-game season, there were 2,430 regular season games scheduled in 2018. At 4 minutes saved per game, that comes out to 9,720 free minutes or – and this is going to blow your mind – 162 hours saved!

Pulitizer-winning novelist Philip Roth once called baseball’s pace “peculiarly hypnotic tedium” and, just to be clear, he meant that in a good way.

I’m sure you put your 4-minute-per-game savings to good use last season.

Maybe you used your free minutes to watch Bongo Cat play Africa …

 

The average American shower takes 8 minutes – so you could have had half a shower, which is time enough to soap, but maybe not enough to rinse.

Fun Fact: The 3 hour, 4 minute average baseball game is almost identical to the length of an average NFL football game, but without all the brain-damaging concussions.

(It’s odd that some people who complain about baseball games being too long and slow are the same ones who complain that the off-season – without baseball – is also too long and slow. I watched the Orioles lose 115 games last season. What’s your hurry?) Continue reading →

Worst Place

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Editor/Husband thinks it’s important to tell you, before you go any further, that I had a migraine. He thinks this is the headache – and the headache sleep – talking. (Maybe. Maybe he’s right.)

A line of trees curved around the outfield. Trees where the fence would be. Should be. But, this outfield was lined only with trees.

And, in the trees, high up, with their legs splayed over the thicker branches like they were riding ponies, were men. Fans. All sorts of men, at different heights among the tree branches. Different ages, but none too young, and none too old. And, every one, with legs splayed over the branches. Tree riders.

And, some were smoking. And, some hadn’t shaved. And, each one held a rolled-up newspaper that he beat in rhythm – along with the others – against the branches, rattling the leaves. They all seemed angry. Or, maybe they were just irritated that nothing had happened yet in a game that had yet to start.

And, there was an umpire explaining the ground rules. Explaining them to me, perhaps, but mostly to the players.

Explaining why the third base line that ran in from left field, was not a line but a crick of running water. But, not quite a crick, exactly, but something narrower than that. What would you call it? Would you call it a rill? OK, that’s what it was. A rill. And, the water in the rill bubbled and ran from the left field line, cut through third base, and flowed to home, and continued past home, extending into a wide field well behind where the game would be played and out of sight.

Continue reading →