“Within the ball park, time moves differently, marked by no clock except the events of the game. This is the unique, unchangeable feature of baseball and perhaps explains why this sport, for all the enormous changes it has undergone … remains somehow rustic, unviolent, and introspective. …
“Baseball’s time is seamless and invisible, a bubble within which players move at exactly the same pace and rhythms as all their predecessors.”
~ Roger Angell
Baseball keeps me close.
It keeps me close to my dad who didn’t even really like baseball, but it keeps me there nevertheless whenever I hear Vin Scully’s voice (less often now) or see a Dodger’s logo. Even though my dad’s been gone for years.
But, that’s it. Dodgers, Cubs, Indians, Blue Jays.
The rest of us must find the local in our October baseball elsewhere.
Each fall, college baseball teams around the country hold “Fall Ball” seasons or “World Series” intra-squad competitions. It keeps veteran players sharp and gives freshmen a chance to show that they can play at the college level. And, it gives the rest of us something to do until Spring Training rolls around.
The University of Virginia (UVA) Cavaliers are holding their seven-game Orange vs. Blue World Series this month.
UVA’s Jake McCarthy, Team Orange, considering a steal. UVA’s Justin Novak, Team Blue, waits at short. Or, as Editor/Husband describes the Orange vs. Blue series: “Brother against Brother.”
The games are free and while the stands aren’t packed, you’ll find baseball fans, assorted scouts with radar guns, and the player’s parents, who often sit together and watch with the deep and seasoned concentration of loving moms and dads who have been watching from the sidelines since their sons were in tee-ball.
The games can be surreal. It’s hard to cobble together two full squads from just one team, so one team here plays without a DH or a 9th batter. There’s a “Designated Runner” who’s been sent in to run for a batter who can hit, but because of injury hasn’t been cleared to run. Games can go seven innings or eight … or less or more … depending on the time, the day, or the whims of the coaches. Games can end in a tie.
It is a game. But, the rules of the games get blurry sometimes.
Outfielder/Pitcher Adam Haseley swings at the first pitch of the 2016 UVA Fall Ball Season. The 4 p.m. shadows creep over the infield and batter’s box much earlier, quicker, and thicker than in the spring.
Team Orange’s Jack Weiller waits on second while Team Blue talks strategy on the mound.
The UVA Orange team has won two games and one game ended in a tie for those of you who keep track of those sorts of things. They play again on Friday.
At a time when the world – and our nation – seems so divided, angry, and divisive isn’t it nice to be able to root for everyone?
Because when your home team is playing your home team, all you can do is cheer.
It was during my junior year in high school that the school math team – the “mathletes” – were one player short. There were four mathletes ready to go, but they needed a five.
I’m not sure why my geometry teacher invited me to join the team. I wasn’t particularly good in his class and I was pretty clear that I hated two things in school – gym and numbers. But, I would always laugh at his jokes. So, I was his choice. Your take away from this: a good chuckle might take you far in this world.
He convinced me to join the team, which was about to go to the state tournament in Minot, by promising we would stop for banana splits on the two-hour drive back home. Yes, if there was a banana split in it for me, I could spend the day with four geeky mathletes and a teacher who told corny jokes.
I have no memory of the meet except for sitting at a long table, writing problems on pieces of paper, and being forbidden from using a calculator. We didn’t win, but I don’t think I was too terrible.
In any event, the Dairy Queen in Rugby was out of bananas by the time we got there. This is my only clear memory of my one day as a mathlete. Even the worst mathlete knows that zero bananas means zero banana splits.
So, funny that I’ve come to love baseball which is all numbery and statisticfied.
The Baseball Project even wrote a song that is only numbers – comforting and familiar baseball stats. Here are the lyrics in their entirety:
“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’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.
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.
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 …
… 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.
“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.
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.
In response to the Word Press Daily Post Photo Challenge: Future. See more challenge photos here.
When The Daily Post asked bloggers to show their “Happy Place” on their blogs this week I wasn’t going to play along. After all, what do you expect me to say?
Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home;
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which seek thro’ the world, is ne’er met elsewhere.
Home! Home! Sweet, sweet home!
There’s no place like home! There’s no place like home!
Funny thing. 1823 is also the year that we can find the first known references to the game of “base ball”:
“I was last Saturday much pleased in witnessing a company of active young men playing the manly and athletic game of ‘base ball’ at the Retreat in Broadway.” ~ The National Advocate, April 23, 1823.
UVa defeated the Canadian squad (an 18-and-under team featuring some of the best young players in the country) 12-5 last night in a strange 14-inning “exhibition” game that was a more a showcase for scouts, I think, than an actual game. Players batting out of order. Pinch runners pinch running and then disappearing. Really odd.
But, still … even really odd baseball is Happy Place worthy.
In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Happy Place.”
On to summer, when the sun runs high and hot, the nights turn steamy, and the hottest teams go on sweaty win streaks and the homers fly out like crazy because, as every fan knows, baseballs love the heat and humidity.
I mean, how can they be better than Saturday, right?
But, good days come in all shapes and sizes. And, this Monday was good.
Let’s check the “Good Day” box score …
Time in my day – and some jingle in my pocket – to sit down at Miso Sweetfor lunch. Good!
Ramen. And, Donuts. Charlottesville. Very Good!
I know that not everyone has the time to sit down for lunch or the money to have a nutritious meal. It is not lost on me.
In the bathroom I find this note:
Good advice!
Photo: My trusty four-year old Droid. Permanent thumbprint on the lens. Not a good photo, but then, sometimes, even on good days, you are caught camera-less and only have one thumbprinty photo to show for yourself.
After lunch, I still have time to get to my Yoga studio for my own practice before my classes start. Awesome Good!
Yoga classes are full. Bountiful Goodness!
Sure, the Baltimore Orioles were swept by the Twins over the weekend. Sure, they will lose again on Monday night … and Tuesday night. Sure, they look not so good and that’s six straight losses and the chances for Orioles baseball in October are looking a little like this:
But, still. Delicious lunch. Good advice from a restaurant bathroom. Yoga.
“Pretty soon the ball player will not have rest enough between seasons to get acquainted with his folks.” ~ The Sporting News, November 7, 1912
In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge:“Off-Season.”
They call it “The Grind.” That long baseball season. That life ballplayers choose.
For the pros, it begins in February at spring training and, if you’re lucky, it will extend to the far reaches of October.
College ball starts in February and stretches through four months, then summer league teams, and a “bonus” fall season tucked in before the snow falls.
Whatever’s left, that’s your “off-season.”
I thought “off-season” was a baseball term that had worked its way into the rest of the language. But, “off-season” is a business term that was first used in the 1840s.
The Sporting News, November 7, 1912
In 1912, The Sporting News complained that Charles Comiskey, President and Owner of the Chicago White Sox, was running his players ragged by shortening the off-season and putting his team on a train to California in the middle of February to begin spring training, forcing his players into exhibition games along the way, stopping at any place where a pick-up game might put extra “coin” into the owner’s pocket.
We don’t lay fallow much. There’s not much off-season for anybody these days. Apparently, there never was.
The Baseball Bloggess 