Tag: baseball

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Something Might Happen

Dad said not to bring my glove. “We’re all the way up in the red seats,” he said.“No one’s gonna hit it up there.” Then, as if to emphasize the point, “No way. Not. At. All.”

But I brought it anyway.

It was an early April morning in 1988. The late ’80s were good years – after Pete Rose had broken the record but before the mess of banishment – when the Reds seemed to always finish second to the Dodgers, Giants, or Astros, no matter how hard they tried.

Dad and I rode a city bus down Winton Road from the northern suburbs, through St. Bernard, through Corryville, past UC, and straight through Over the Rhine like a Barry Larkin line drive, ending up on Fountain Square an hour ahead of the Findlay Market parade. It was Opening Day, the holiest of baseball holidays, and we reveled in our annual pilgrimage.

I held the glove under my left arm. Dad eyed me sideways. “You never know,” I said. “Something might happen.”

Dad got a coffee, I opened a bag of peanuts, and we sat on the steps overlooking Fifth Street. The crowds started to gather. “Tell me the Johnny Bench story again,” I said, and he launched into an elaborate tale of the time, when he was in middle school, he and a friend got a ride home from Crosley Field with the new Rookie catcher, Johnny Bench.

“He rolled up to us in a big convertible and said, “You boys need a lift? Of course we said yes, and he drove us all the way home.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Nothing. We was both too scared to say anything, so we sat in silence the whole way.”

The parade started. Marching bands, decorated Cadillacs carrying politicians, and elaborate floats with local celebrities carrying signs for hometown staples like Goldstar Chili and JTM hamburgers went by in quick succession. When the last float passed, the crowd flowed in behind, following the parade like a jubilant, New Orleans wake, down to Riverfront Stadium for the start of a brand new season.

We made it to our seats high up in the red seats about as far away from the field as you could get.

“You think the Reds have a chance this year?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Dad said. “Soto’s washed up, Bo Diaz is a rusted out, chain-link fence behind the plate, and I’m still not sure about Larkin over Stillwell at short.”

I soured a little. He noticed.

“Then again, that Tom Browning is pretty good, Eric Davis can hit the cover off the ball, and with Franco closing, you never know…”

“Something might happen,” we said together, and laughed. It was always easy to laugh when it was him and me.

The game was a tough one. Mario Soto gave up an early lead to the Cardinals. He was, indeed, washed up, which didn’t bode well for the season. The Reds were down 4-1 in the sixth, but battled back to a tie in the seventh and took it to extra innings.

“More baseball for the exact same price!” Dad used to say.

The game was fun, but I wanted a ball. I stood for most of the afternoon with my glove on my hand, ready. Dad just shook his head like he knew something I didn’t.

For a while, it seemed like that might be the case but, in the 11th, Tracey Jones tagged a foul shot off of a Cardinal reliever, and I watched as the ball soared up to our section.

“Go for it!”

I ran down the steps to the front row, reaching my glove as far out over the railing as I could, hoping for a miracle. The ball danced around the webbing at the tip of my glove, then bounced away, falling to the blue seats below. I returned to my seat, dejected.

“That’s alright,” Dad said. “You’ll get the next one.”

But the next one didn’t come. Not then, anyway. Kal Daniels knocked in a run in the the twelfth, “And this one belongs to the Reds!” everyone shouted, mimicking Marty Brennaman’s signature phrase. The Reds won 5-4 and, right then, everyone in the stands truly believed that day’s success would carry us all the way to the World Series.

Opening Day does that to you, somehow. It makes believers out of all of us.

I fell asleep on the bus afterward. Dad carried me from the bus stop to our house, my glove secured safely in his left arm, the same way he carried his glove when he was young. The same way my kids carry their gloves today. The sins and graces of the father passing down unto multiple generations, forever and ever, Amen.

It was a good day.

It was a good year, too. Chris Sabo got his start, and it wasn’t long before all the kids in my school wanted their own pair of Spuds McKenzie goggles. Danny Jackson won 23 games and would have won a Cy Young, too, if not for Orel Hershiser. Tom Browning threw a perfect game and Ron Robinson came within one strike of the same feat, too.

The Reds hosted the All Star Game, with Barry Larkin – who really WAS better than Kurt Stillwell it turned out – on the team, proving himself more than capable of carrying Concepcion’s mantle.

Dad and I went to a lot of games that year and in the years to follow. But nothing beats Opening Day. No matter how bad the Reds are, no matter how bleak the prospects, on Opening Day anything is possible. On Opening Day, the slate is clean and the entire season stretches out in front of you like a dream.

Another Opening Day is right around the corner. The Redlegs could tank, sure, but you never know. Magic could strike at any time. It happens. All it takes is the willingness to believe, just for a day. So grab your glove, keep your eyes open, and wait for something to happen.

Because on Opening Day, something always does.

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Bring Two Of Every Kind

The Cincinnati Reds got rained out in the eighth inning last night, although you probably could have surprised the umpiring crew with that statement. Seemed like they just wanted to keep the party going. A quick glance at some Youtube videos showed the Gods tossing everything but the kitchen sink on the field in an effort to get the umps to pull their heads out of their echo chambers. I even saw some fancy silverware flying.

This ain’t football, umps. This ain’t Rugby. This is baseball. We don’t deal with mild spring rains here. No Sir. They offend our delicate sensibilities.

In reality, though, would you want to stand in against a professional major league chuck-flinger, who is capable of throwing projectiles in your direction at 100+mph when said chuck-flinger says the rain is so bad he can’t hold onto the ball?

Not me, bubba.

I’d rather be at the bottom of a mud pit dogpile scrum in a mid-November NFL game where the most exciting thing is the torrential sleet and downpour. At least there, you can make hand signals at the 350lb lineman currently crushing your chest cavity while your helmet fills with water. Death is no surprise in that scenario. And who knows? Maybe that guy will move and let you roll the dice again on the next play? Happens all the time.

A pitcher loses control of his fastball in the rain and your liable to wake up in the hospital three days later doing your best Dan Crenshaw impersonation. A permanent one. Then, all you’d have left is a career in piracy or politics (but I repeat myself), and what kind of fun is that?

The game resumes this evening, and let’s hope the Gods have found other things with which to distract themselves.

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Peanut Butter Sandwiches

“Life is hard, my Grandma would tell me. “Eventually someone will hurt you. When that happens, you get to decide: fight back, or forgive. It’s up to you. What will you do?

As a kid, I played baseball in the field behind my Grandma’s house. We played every day, all day, and each day for lunch, my Grandma made us her world-famous peanut butter sandwiches. These were beautiful: a single piece of toast with a thin layer of peanut butter spread on top. That’s simple enough, but what made them special was she wrote your name into the peanut butter so you knew THIS one was yours.

One day, we went down to our field, but no one could find a ball. “No problem, I said. “My Grandma has one. I’ve seen it. She keeps it in a plastic case on her bookshelf.

I snuck into the house, removed the ball from its case without making a sound, and went back down to the field to play. A few hours later, Grandma came out, asking to see the ball.

What I didn’t know was this ball was a gift from my Grandpa. He’d got it signed by Ted Kluszewski, Grandma’s favorite Red, when he was on a business trip some years ago. As the story goes, Grandpa carried that ball with him everywhere that trip. He was so excited to give it to her.

Only he never got the chance. Grandpa had a heart attack and died in hotel room. They found the ball in his suitcase, his last gift to her. Now, because of me, it was covered in dirt and scuff marks. The signature was gone. When I handed it to my Grandma, she started to cry.

“Life is hard, I thought. “Eventually someone will hurt you. I heard that speech hundreds of times growing up, but I never thought I would hurt Her.

The next day was rough. I struck out six times before lunch break and, when everyone went up for their sandwiches, I hung back, sitting on a swing set nearby. I was too ashamed to go in. Grandma came out later and sat next to me.

“I’m sorry, Grandma, I said.

“I know, she said. “I have something for you. She gave me a plate with two peanut butter sandwiches on it. The first one said my name. The second: I forgive you. I took that sandwich like communion and smiled. Grandma smiled, too, and just like that, everything was alright. All the guilt I felt, all the pain I caused melted away with those three beautiful words: I forgive you. It felt like freedom.

Later that day, we put the ball back in its case, scuff marks and all. You could still see hints of the signature if you looked close enough. We knew it was there, hiding somewhere underneath the dirt, and that made all the difference.

Baseball and forgiveness are sticky, like a peanut butter sandwich. They stick with you. This story has stuck with me most of my life. We’d mention it every now and again at Family dinners, holidays, or when watching a Reds game on television and someone with big arms and cropped sleeves came to the plate. Grandma would pull the ball out at the start of each season to remind that, while baseball is fun, there are sometimes things that matter more.

This lesson came back to me a few years ago. Grandma was out for a drive one day, when someone ran a stoplight at twice the speed limit and broadsided her. The paramedics worked frantically to save her, but she died on the way to the hospital. The other driver, a college kid named Emily, walked away from the accident without a scratch.

We all struggled with this; my mom in particular. For weeks, she couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, had even taken to stalking this kid Emily on the Internet. “She’s on Facebook! she’d say. “She’s on Twitter, she’d say. “Have you seen these pictures? Have you seen her smile?! WHY DOES SHE GET TO BE HAPPY?

Sometimes life just isn’t fair. Is it?

A few months later, the local high school had a traffic safety seminar and Emily was listed as one of the speakers. You better believe we went. Mom was oddly quiet about it, but the rest of us? We wanted to see this Monster face to face. But I think something changed, for all of us, when Emily got up to speak.

The worst part, she said, “wasn’t losing my license or the nightmares, or even the physical pain that comes with having been in an accident. No. The worst part was knowing I had taken someone’s friend, someone’s mother, someone’s Grandma.

A little kid raised his hand. “What would you say if you could talk to her today?

“I’d tell her I’m sorry, Emily said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

What we saw, in that moment, was Emily wasn’t this Monster we’d made her out to be. She was a scared kid, sitting alone on her own swing set, just like me when I was a kid. Only now, there was no one to come out, sit next to her, and make it all better.

Afterward, my Mom introduced herself. “The woman you killed was my mother.

Emily lowered her head in shame, but my Mom didn’t stop there. “I heard what you said, and if SHE were here, she’d want you to have this. Mom reached into her purse, and pulled out a little baggie with two peanut butter sandwiches in it. On the first one, she wrote the name Emily. On the second: I forgive you.

Emily took that sandwich like communion and smiled. Mom smiled, too, and just like that, everything was alright. They couldn’t bring my Grandma back, but both women could finally move on. That’s what forgiveness does. It lets you move on. It makes you free.

You can’t lead a life of peace unless you’re willing to forgive, and that’s what my Grandma taught us. That’s what she left us: a beautiful legacy of forgiveness for me, my Mother, my friends on the baseball field, even Emily. I keep the dirty baseball with Ted Kluszewski’s ghost signature on a shelf in my office as a reminder of that legacy.

And, now, all of those who’ve shared in that legacy would like to pass it on to you. Life is hard, eventually someone will hurt You. When that happens, you get to choose. Will you fight back? Or will you share the beauty and the freedom of baseball, forgiveness, and peanut butter sandwiches?

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Empty Fields

It was a simple field. The path to it ran past my grandmother’s house, through a set of bushes and into a circular clearing behind. First base was a tree stump. Second was a raised patch of earth that kicked up dust whenever someone ran over it with a lawnmower.

We used an old glove, one we found lying underneath a rock next to a stream in the woods behind my house, for third. Home was ditch that wore thin the first couple years, then gave up on growing anything thereafter, because when you played ball as often as we did – day after week after month after year; without ceasing, even in the cold months – it tends to leave a mark.

Childhood is more powerful than Mother Nature in some ways, which is probably why it wears out quickly, and leaves such a lasting impression.

We shared a lot of great moments on that field. There were countless home runs, stolen bases, and arguments about how many ghost men were on when one of us hit the ball over the fence in right field and into Mrs. Bradenton’s back yard. We got there early and stayed all day. My Grandma made us peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. She wrote your name into the peanut butter with her finger nail so you knew THIS one was all yours.

Grandmas are good at that, aren’t they?

There was the time Sean Hinken learned to hold a pitch just so, making the ball dance like he held it on a string. Sean threw three no-hitters in a row that day, breaking Johnny Vander Meer‘s impossible-to-break streak of two. There was the time the Paoletti twins, Josh and Jeff, both chased a ball into the thicket in center field. They emerged two seconds later, a cloud of bees in their wake. And there was the time I flattened Adam Hester on a close play at home, rolling over his leg, nearly breaking it.

“Dang it, Joe! Time to lay off the Twinkies, ya think?”

Only he didn’t say, “Dang it.” Back then, we explored profanity like many of us would later explore cheap beer and frantic make-out sessions with girls. Sloppy and inartful, but electric nonetheless.

How long has it been, now? Twenty-Five years? Thirty? Some days it seems like another lifetime, and on others the memories are so close I could reach out and touch them.

You could play a game anywhere. All you needed was a bat and a ball, and few kids you might not know and would never see again. That, and a field, of course. Back then, everyone had a field. We ran games in back yards, parking lots, abandoned fields, and remote, wooded clearings.

We played little league, sure, but the Real games took place after practice, after school, away from the watchful eyes of rule keepers and score trackers. We argued over calls, close plays, and who got to be Pete Rose or Johnny Bench, knowing full well each of us planned to mimic our heroes when it was our turn to hit, regardless of who had dibs.

Nobody knew how long we’d been playing and nobody cared. There was only the game, your friends, and the desire to keep moving forward for just a few more innings before the street lights came on and everyone had to go home.

We knew our time was limited. We knew we’d grow up one day, move on, and leave these long, lazy days in the fields of our youth behind. But we also had a sense that this game we loved and these fields on which we played would pass onto the next generation. And the one after that.

Now, when I drive past the fields I played on as a kid, I don’t see baseball. I see soccer, and sometimes I see housing developments. More often than not, I see empty fields. The well-worn patches of our youth have grown over and healed, Mother Nature outlasting the same way she outlasts everyone.

Maybe it’s because I’m getting older. Maybe it’s because my eyesight has worsened and my knees creak when i walk. Or maybe its because even if I close my eyes tight and look to the sky I still can barely remember what it feels like to hit a ball and know, just by touch, it would sail over Mrs. Bradenton’s fence. Maybe it’s because Winter is upon us, the kids are in school, and the baseball season is over, but I wonder whether this game we all loved will indeed pass on, even to just the next generation.

Baseball will be around for a while, but will it be the same? Will it still be as good? All those empty fields make me wonder.

Next season, when the weather starts to warm, I’ll go out for a walk. I’ll find a clearing or a parking lot or an abandoned field with a few worn patches. I listen long and hard for the voices of children, kids who don’t care that the sun has set, kids who just want to get in a few more innings before the sun sets, screaming with delight: “Ghost man on second. My turn to hit. Throw me your best and watch me hit that (stuff) into the woods.”

Maybe then I’ll smile.

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Baseball, Forgiveness, and Peanut Butter Sandwiches

“Life is hard,” my Grandma would tell me. “Eventually someone will hurt you. When that happens, you get to decide: fight back, or forgive. It’s up to you. What will you do?”

As a kid, I played baseball in the field behind my Grandma’s house. We played every day, all day, and each day for lunch, my Grandma made us her world-famous peanut butter sandwiches. These were beautiful: a single piece of toast with a thin layer of peanut butter spread on top. That’s simple enough, but what made them special was she wrote your name into the peanut butter so you knew THIS one was yours.

Read the rest at Redleg Nation.

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Rituals

This time of year is always tough. Football season is ramping up, the weather has hinted that it might start to cool off a bit here soon, and the kids have gone back to school. Even those of you who are not either a student or a parent have, at the very least, spent a long commute caught in the sloth-like wake of a school bus, wondering why we haven’t developed flying cars be now.

The answer: because your stupid teenagers would drive those flying cars, crashing into each other, killing thousands. Then where would we be?

There’s lots to distract us from our favorite pastime. Heck, I’ve even given up on Fantasy Baseball. My team, the Florida Dumpster Fire, has descended into last place, breaking decades-long records for ineptitude in our keeper league. It’s easy, in seasons like this, where the impossibility of a postseason was a foregone conclusion before the Findlay Market Parade took its first steps on Opening Day. Back then, we thought anything might happen. Now, we know that nothing has and nothing will. How do we keep things relevant?

Read the rest over at Redlegnation

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Ron Robinson and the Near-Perfect Game

I have a lot of good Reds memories. Most of us do, I guess.

I remember sitting on the floor in my living room, watching Eric Show give up THE HIT to Pete Rose. The REAL hit came a few days earlier in Chicago, but nobody knew it then and we celebrated like we’d won the lottery. I screamed so loud, our pet beagle, Murphy, had to leave his customary spot in the sun next to the door to get away from all the noise.

I was in attendance on Johnny Bench day in the early ‘80s when Bench hung up his spikes. The game was humdrum, but they gave a Johnny Bench handout at the gates to the first X-thousand guests. I still remember how it looked, sitting in the corner of my room next to the door. No amount of music posters, Chicago Bulls memorabilia from the ‘90s MJ teams, or hastily built bookshelves could supplant it from that place of honor. I kept that handout stapled to my wall until I graduated high school and THEN I kept it with my baseball cards. I lost both it and the baseball cards when my parent’s basement flooded in 1998. So it goes. Bench was always my favorite player. I wore my baseball cap backwards from birth in deference to him. I still do, even though I’m nearly 40 and I look weird when I do it. It just feels wrong to wear it right.

Read the rest at Redleg Nation.

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What if DAS PLAN isn’t working?

Ever since we started this most recent rebuild, the Reds have told us to BE CALM and DON’T WORRY, because (and repeat this with me now) “There is a plan.” This plan allegedly includes graphs and charts and other implements of destruction printed up on glossy paper in an official binder somewhere in Great American Ballpark.

Billy Hatcher and Jose Rijo stand guard over the plan when the Reds are out of town. They drink espresso and reminisce about the 1990 team. Or so I hear.

Read the rest at Redleg Nation.

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The Records Fall: Ichiro eclipses Pete

Sometime this week, or maybe the next, Ichiro Suzuki of the Miami Marlins will break Pete Rose’s hallowed record for most career hits.

Before you get excited, there are caveats to that, of course. Ichiro only breaks the record if you include the 1278 he got while playing in Japan. And, if you’re going to do that, you might as well include Pete’s 400-500 hits from minor league teams. But if you’re going to do THAT, you have to take into account that the Japanese league plays significantly fewer games than the US each season. But then … and then …

I get it. This isn’t a debate about who holds the record. Rather, it’s a conversation about records in general.

Most Reds fans who were alive at the time, know where they were when Pete broke the record. We remember it like it was yesterday.

Read the rest at Redlegnation.

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The Loveable Everyman

I have a soft spot in my heart for the Loveable Everyman. I don’t know why. He’s the guy who gets by on grit and nothing else. The guy who out works everyone until he wins.

Maybe it’s the idea that even an Average Joe can find success in the land of opportunity that excites me. No matter how great or how small, everyone has a chance if they’re willing to work for it.

I like that.

I published my second article with Redleg Nation today. It was about the passing of the everyman torch from previous fan favorite, Corky Miller, to the next generation.

Read More.