Why and when baseball died for me

I grew up with the usual shoebox of baseball cards under my bed. I am convinced to this day that I had a Mickey Mantle rookie card in that shoebox, and that my mother ruined my life by throwing it out when I went to college.

I struggled with actually playing ball, being athletically challenged. Not just lack of coordination, but bone laziness as well. It took me many years, well into chronological adulthood, before I realized that there were no shortcuts not involving hard work, if you wanted to accomplish something worthwhile.

I did make a fitful sort of effort at baseball in school. I was a weak hitter, an uncertain fielder, and could throw only poorly. Apart from those things, I was a natural.

One afternoon as my ninth-grade baseball group endured a late-spring scratch game, overseen by our coach, I came to bat. It was late in an unseasonably hot day, the boys were tired and ready to go to the locker room. The sides were tied, and the coach said the game had to be played out before we could go to the showers. At intervals, the coach had stopped the game to give us pointers about the game. Just before I came to bat, he had stressed that once we hit the ball, our only concern was to run to first as fast as we could, remembering to cross the base and turn to the right, then tag up. Watching our hit sail into the field was not productive.

I heard my teammates calling as I approached the plate, "Ah, here comes Felix, now we can go to the gym, he's an easy out. Good old Felix!" I dug in at the plate, determined to prove them wrong. A couple of pitches, a couple of strikes, my teammates were laughing and cheering, "Good old Felix, we knew he could do it." The next pitch came toward the plate, I swung, and connected. The ball bounced through the gap, and I was digging for first, running as hard as I could, not looking where the ball was going, following the coach's directions to the letter. I crossed the bag, turned right and tagged up. Guys on the bench were groaning, players in the field were kicking the dirt, I was a goat...but I was safe. I looked around, saw the pitcher step to the mound, fielders assuming their positions, and decided to take a small lead off of first. As soon as my foot left the bag, the first baseman whipped out his glove with the bootlegged ball still in it, and tagged me out. The cheers were raucous and derisive. "Good old Felix, we knew he could do it."

The coach was a good and decent man. He tried to make his voice heard over the noise of the laughing and cheering, "He did exactly right, he ran hard for first, he tagged up. He did what he was supposed to do." The boys ran for the gym. I collected my gear and followed. The coach awkwardly slapped my back.

Baseball was over.

Jousting Online

The best in this kind are but shadows:
and the worst are no worse, if imagination
amend them.

-Midsummer Night's Dream(5:1.210)

Although my experience of newsgroups, message boards and blogs is not particularly extensive, I have certainly noticed the storm and fury that often attends exchanges between posters. There are many reasons for posting your words online, and apparently for some the major reason is to smite very roughly those with whom you do not agree, or simply do not like.

The depth of venom and the extended time line of such exchanges make you want to ship prozac or paxil, stat, to the participants. Abraham Lincoln was half right when he claimed that the world would little note nor long remember what was said at Gettysburg; nobody remembers Edward Everett's speech. There are few Lincolns posting on message boards, though. Nobody much remembers last week's flames, except for obsessional participants therein.

Attacking posts by persons for whom you have contempt seems very much like tailgating an annoying car, to me. To have contempt for the skill or judgement of a driver or a writer on an ephermal forum, why surrender your independence of that person? Tailgating is likely to involve you in a highly unpleasant experience; engaging in pointless flame wars has the same result.