Tag Archives: baseball

Jun3

I’m Offically Middle Aged

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Thanks for all the memories, Kid!

It all started when Bret Michaels had his stroke and I thought for sure he was going to join Janis. Then, while riding around last week, I heard Pearl Jam on WROQ — “your CLASSIC ROCK station.” Then today, the bottom just fell out of my delusion that I am still young when I turned on ESPN SportsCenter to find out Ken Griffey, Jr. retired last night.

“The Kid” has hung up his cleats.

To me, Junior will always be the best baseball player of my generation. He is the anti-Barry Bonds. When everyone else in the game, from the power hitters to the ball girls in the outfield corners, was juicing up on performance enhancing drugs, Junior stayed clean. In time, he passed the tarnished likes of McGwire and Sosa to settle in at number five on the all time home run list for major league baseball. Over a career that began the year I graduated high school, that gorgeous left-handed arching swing blasted a ball over the outfield wall 630. Every time, it was his own power that did it. Nothing in a bottle, pill, or needle.

In many ways comparing Junior to Barry Buffoon goes deeper than just the home runs. It shows a lot about raising children. Bobby Bonds was a pretty good baseball player too, but he was a consummate jerk as well. That makes it no surprise that son Barry would be surly, ill-natured, and divisive as well. Across the country, however, Ken Griffey, Sr. was putting together a masterful career with “The Big Red Machine” of the 1970’s and he was doing it with class and grace.

Like father, like son.

Junior wasn’t just clean, he was classy. Win or lose, he kept a calm demeanor. He wasn’t a press hound and truthfully shunned the spotlight as much as possible. Unfortunately for him, when you singlehandedly save a franchise from shutting down — the Seattle Mariners in this case — the press is going to want to talk to you A LOT. When he left the revived M’s to play elsewhere, he turned down the gobs of money thrown at him by nearly every team in baseball, including my beloved Braves. Instead, he took a much lower salary to play for the Reds — his daddy’s team, his hometown team. In this sports era of contracts the size of some small countries’ GNP, Junior was never the highest paid player in baseball, but he was certainly one of the classiest. In five years, he’ll be a lead-pipe lock for first ballot election to the Hall of Fame and it won’t shock me in the slightest if he’s the first unanimous selection since Lou Gehrig was given a special election so he could see his bust in the HOF before the disease that bears his name took his life.

So “The Kid” is done. He’s 40 years old, just one year older than me, so that means my generation of baseball players, the ones I sat and watched in college as rookies and wished I could be, are passing. It’s not a terrible tragedy, I suppose, but it is one more signpost on life’s road saying, “Son, you’re not as young as you used to be.”  So now I’m one step closer to becoming one of those old guys who drives the young people nuts with stories about “I remember when . . . ”

Hopefully, I’ll be good at the job.

Congratulations on a magnificent career, Junior, and for the rest of you, know that I love you and keep those feet clean!

May12

Take Me Out To The Ball Game!

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I GOT IT!!!

Budge likes to support her children when she knows they play a sport so tonight we trekked out to Heritage Park to see one of her fourth graders pitch. Now, Heritage Park is a beautiful facility with six regulation fields that have excellent seating, backstops, and dugouts. The infields are manicured and the outfields are free of yellow dandelion heads. These facilities are parsecs away from the diamonds of my youth.

The players haven’t changed quite as much though.

First of all, the group we were watching was the first year kid pitcher threw the ball at kid batter instead of some tee or coach providing the target. That in and of itself is one scary proposition. I mean, they’re fourth graders. Ask any of them and they’ll all assure you they can be the next Nolan Ryan or Greg Maddux. Well, they can’t. If a coach can find a kid who can throw the ball across the plate about belt high roughly four out of five times, he has an ace. If the kid happens to be left handed, he’s got a shot at the championship! Of course, it’s always funny to see a team facing their first lefty. Once when I was watching a similar age group much earlier in the season, the first batter to face the fielding team’s left-hander shouted to his coach, “Hey, Coach! What do I do? He’s standing on the wrong side of the pitcher’s mound!!”

Just as an aside, if Budge and I are ever blessed with a son (doubtful at this point, but hope does spring eternal), I have already decided that I’m going to duct tape a baseball into his LEFT hand and superglue a glove onto his right hand as soon as he can toddle then pray that he takes after his maternal grandfather and makes 6′ 2″ tall. That’s pretty much my retirement plan because if you know anything about baseball, you know the Majors are woefully short on southpaw pitchers.

Watching the boys play tonight reminded me of the two fitful seasons I attempted to be a baseball player. It was not a pleasant recollection. First of all, I was short, but I made up for it by being fat. Plus, I ran slower than a three legged turtle crossing a glacier in January. Finally, I had the hand-eye coordination of a blind rhesus monkey with cerebral palsy. In short, I was the model tee-ball right fielder. For those of you who don’t know, no one in tee-ball hits to right field. You have to be left handed and get the ball past the first baseman. Both are rarities in tee-ball leagues. Right field is pretty much the Vice-Presidency of a tee-ball team. If a little league coach is faced with where to play a complete non-athlete, right field is first choice every time.

It was so bad, I was known to not come in for our side’s at bats. I’d often just stay out in right field with the opposing team’s short, dumpy, clumsy clone of me. Made a lot of friends that way. Picked a lot of dandelions too. Once, while I was in the midst of a daydream, I even got hit in the head with a fly ball. I was so excited to actually be so close to an actual ball that I picked it up and chucked it into the infield. That’s when I found out it was foul ball from the adjacent field.

I hung up my glove and cleats after tee-ball though. I wasn’t nearly brave enough to stand at the plate with nothing between me and that hurtling ball but my skill with a bat. I was a coward, but I was an unbruised coward.

Tonight’s game, however, was a bloodless affair. Only one batsman was hit by a pitch. Both pitchers were fairly capable and overall, it was a fun event to watch. Of course, one of the most precious moments was watching both right fielders. Both were paragons of intensity, coiled steel waiting to unleash their skills on the first ball to come their way. I couldn’t help but smile and think, “It’s okay, kid. I saw a lefty or two in the batting order. Just be patient.”

Love y’all. Keep those feet clean!