(Does Joe ever write a “Cup o’ Joe” anymore?!)

I’ll take a tip from John S and tell a tale of my little league memories. After my little league experiences, it’s amazing that I love baseball now as much as I do. As I tell my tale, it’s important to note that I was only about 3 feet tall until my sophmore year of high school.

When I was very young, I’m sure I was signed up for PAL Little League because all my friends were. But, because of where my birthday fell, I was not on a team with them. I was on a team with kids a year older than me. Couple that with my impressive stature and the fact that I was deathly afraid of the ball, and you can gather that I wasn’t the most popular kid on the team.

Of course I was stuck out in right field where nobody could hit the ball. That was good, because most of the time I had no idea what was going on in the game. I would stand out there lost in my own thoughts, dreading my next appearance at the plate. Then I’d only know to run off the field when i saw everyone else run to the dugout. Great… am I up this inning?

I would walk up to the plate and hear the collective groan from my teammates. My ABs would last so long, you’d think I was Jason Giambi. That bat never left my shoulder. A 10mph pitch would come in on the outside of the plate and I would take two steps back away from it. Man that was close! In truth, it was probably very tough for the coaches to pitch to me because my strike zone was so small, but at this level there were no walks or non-swinging strikes. The AB would last until I was embarrassed enough to swing the bat aimlessly three times and take a seat back in the dugout. Ah, the dugout bench… the only place where I couldn’t screw up. Knowing what I know now, I feel even worse for my parents who had to sit with the other parents who would groan worse than my teammates when my spot in the order came up. I’m sure there was much worse than groans, but they’ve lovingly spared me the details.

I was so bad that my alcoholic assistant coach tried to teach me how to bunt so at least I would be doing something at the plate. Yeah, that was a good idea… try to to get the kid who is incredibly afraid of the ball to lean his body into the pitch! Needless to say, that didn’t work well.

I do, however, remember getting one hit in my little league career. Before the game, my father had told me that if I got a hit, he would buy me a Nintendo game. Motivation. Nintendo… I was good at that! I ‘m sure he was just trying to get me to swing the bat quicker. I guess it worked. I swung at the first pitch I saw that day and hit what felt to me like a solid line drive. A real frozen rope. I know it was just a little squib that may or may not have made it past the pitcher, but there I was standing on first base. This was the crowning achievement of my little league career. I don’t remember anything that happened after that. I don’t know if there were real cheers, mock cheers, or laughter. All I could think about for the rest of the game was Double Dragon. What a great game!

Epliogue:
When my illustrious baseball career was over, I was almost as bad on a CYO basketball team. It’s really sad that I was terrible on any organized sport team that I was ever on. I finally got good at sports when I hit my growth spurt in High School (I’m sure it had a lot to do with confidence.) But at that point, organized sports was not what I was interested in (wink, wink). I love to play baseball now, and I still play Double Dragon.