Baseball Highlights of My Youth
I spent a lot of time playing youth sports as a kid. For baseball alone:
summer after first through third grade - T-Ball
summer after fourth and sixth grade - Little League - We went on a huge family road trip the summer after fifth grade so I didn't sign up.
summer after seventh, eighth and ninth grade - Babe Ruth
spring of ninth, tenth and eleventh grade - High school baseball (junior varsity).
summer after ninth, tenth, eleventh grade - American Legion ball.
The coach told me he cut seniors who didn't make the varsity, and then he told me not to bother trying out, so I didn't play high school ball senior year or American Legion the summer after senior year.
Despite all those years of baseball, I have very few memories of anything that I or my teammates accomplished on the field, either in terms of team accomplishments or individual accomplishments. I seem to recall that we won at least one or two low level tourneys in Babe Ruth ball in particular, but I couldn't tell you any more than that.
To be fair, I don't have a lot of other memories of the earlier years on the list either, but still, it seems strange that I spent nearly every summer for more than a decade playing baseball and my list of personal highlights or team lights is minimal. Even for someone who was as terrible at baseball as I was, you'd think there would be some substantial list of minor memories on my personal highlight reel to call out. Here's what little I remember.
There's an old joke that the best year of your baseball life is the summer you turn ten. For me, it was the summer I was twelve, which was the second and final year of Little League. It was also the year I volunteered to play catcher. Before that year that my position was "wherever I wouldn't do much harm, preferably on the bench" but I turned out to be a competent enough catcher to start consistently on the second team. That's another way of saying that we had two better catchers on the first team, but I had an ok arm for my age, and my eyes weren't bad enough to be an impediment yet. I wasn't going to start or even play on the first team, but although I don't remember any specific plays I remember having a good time as the oldest kid and de facto leader of the second team.
Babe Ruth is when most kids dropped out of youth baseball because they had gotten the message about whether they were any good at sports or not. I did not receive that message for baseball, so I spent a lot of time on the bench learning to keep score (a habit I maintain to this day) or to run the scoreboard (boring). I played a lot of "right field when we're ahead or behind by a lot" and not much more. I didn't set the world on fire hitting either. Frankly, I was short, slow chubby, nearsighted with terrible reflexes and a throwing arm that was both somewhat powerful and completely inaccurate. It didn't help my playing time that my school was a perennial power in baseball, so it had a lot of kids who were quite good. I was always the worst player in my grade (except the one year Pat played JV, sorry Pat if you read this), and usually the worst player on the team.
I was still having a lot of fun, so went out for high school ball when it started in ninth grade. Those three years of JV ball were the most fun I had playing baseball. In every other baseball team I played on the coach was the high school social studies teacher, who came across as someone who was convinced he would have made it to the show if he'd been taller than 5'4" (or whatever it was, he was definitely shorter than me). On the JV team, my classmate Chad's dad Curt was our coach, and by comparison he was very relaxed. He was a deer hunter and usually brought a package of venison sausage along for van rides to away games, which he was happy to share with the team.
In my early years of JV, I didn't play too much, but as we got older and my classmates moved up to varsity I was often good enough relative to the younger players to get substantial JV playing time. Plus, by this point several years of lifting weights for football had kicked in and I was very strong for my age. At this point I was still short, slow, and nearsighted with terrible reflexes, but I wasn't chubby so much as muscular and my throwing arm was quite strong but not still mostly inaccurate.
Most of the time I played right field, although my approach to routes and defense, especially given my eyesight, was "adventuresome" at best. For some reason, I also got stuck at third base a lot my last two seasons. You know, the position called "the hot corner" because it requires great reflexes to react, field the ball and throw it accurately to first base in time to catch the runner? Why Curt thought I would make sense at 3B given my poor reflexes, I can't tell you (maybe we didn't have another 3B), but I played there a bit. This led to one of the few clear memories I have of my baseball accomplishments.
We were playing a road game far from home against some team I don't remember (Enderlin maybe? I remember that every time we played them, which wasn't often, their coach had some poor guy on the team wearing one of those black rubber training jackets during warm ups). I was playing 3B. On the mound for us was Jeremy, who was the football coach's son and would end up being the starting QB my last two years of high school. I no longer recall any aspect of the game situation, but at some point the batter smashed an absolute rocket down toward 3B. Somewhat miraculously given my lack of reflexes, I did my best Brooks Robinson imitation and came up with the ball and threw the batter out at first by a step. This would have been a highlight for me in any game, but then a few batters later the exact same thing happened. Two great defensive plays at 3B in one game? I should have hung up my spikes right there!
Offensively, I profiled as a three true outcomes player, albeit with doubles instead of home runs. You know how batters talk about picking up the seams on the ball as the pitch comes in? With my eyesight, I was lucky if I could pick up the ball as it came in. With my eyesight and reflexes combined, I couldn't catch up to a good fastball, and anyone who could make the ball curve could make me look even worse than usual. Fortunately, most of the pitchers who had a good fastball or who could make the ball curve were playing varsity ball, so I mostly got to bat against an assortment of underclassmen who didn't have a plus pitch. This didn't mean I could hit the ball consistently, but when it did I usually hit it hard. I had a lot of doubles when the ball went in the air, and a lot of ground outs when it didn't.
I never hit a home run. The closest I got was during road JV game against St. Thomas-Valley. The bases were loaded when I came to bat. Somehow, I hit a hard high ball to the left-center gap. I have no idea how far out that outfield fence was, but it was about six feet high and the ball hit the top foot of the fence and fell to the ground. The center fielder got to it quickly, and I had to settle for a bases clearing double. It was absolutely the baseball highlight of my life.
However, it wasn't the play I remember the clearest. In my last year of American Legion ball, we were playing against Mayville in Grand Forks. On the mound for Mayville was the aptly named Dan Swift. Swift was a ridiculous physical specimen. It was rumored that he could throw the ball 90 miles an hour and had scouts following him. I doubt either rumor was true, but he could certainly throw it a lot faster than any other pitcher I saw or played against. Even our good hitters usually couldn't do anything with it. For some reason, the coach had me pinch hit against Swift.
As it happens, Swift and I knew each other. Due to some complicated Babe Ruth rules that I didn't understand, once you got to the end of season tournaments the team that won the tournament at each level could pick up a player or two from the defeated teams, or something like that. We'd won the first tournament and Swift was one of two kids we picked up. And he knew he hadn't seen me on varsity games since then! When I went to the plate, Swift told me he was going to throw it straight down the middle and to see what I could do with it. As it happens, I couldn't do a damn thing with it. He threw it straight down the pipe and I took three swings that came nowhere close to making contact before the ball blew past me and hit the catcher's glove right in the middle of the strike zone. As a metaphor for my entire baseball career, it wasn't very subtle.
I loved playing baseball, but that last year of American Legion ball was the end of the line. I did played intramural softball with the fraternity in college. I was one of the better players on the team, which probably explains why we were terrible. We actually threw a party when we won a game for the first time in something like five years. I also played one year of a beer league softball right after college. We were terrible there too. We were so terrible I sometimes played shortstop, which says everything about that team you need to know. Since then I've been happy to watch baseball instead of play it.
summer after first through third grade - T-Ball
summer after fourth and sixth grade - Little League - We went on a huge family road trip the summer after fifth grade so I didn't sign up.
summer after seventh, eighth and ninth grade - Babe Ruth
spring of ninth, tenth and eleventh grade - High school baseball (junior varsity).
summer after ninth, tenth, eleventh grade - American Legion ball.
The coach told me he cut seniors who didn't make the varsity, and then he told me not to bother trying out, so I didn't play high school ball senior year or American Legion the summer after senior year.
Despite all those years of baseball, I have very few memories of anything that I or my teammates accomplished on the field, either in terms of team accomplishments or individual accomplishments. I seem to recall that we won at least one or two low level tourneys in Babe Ruth ball in particular, but I couldn't tell you any more than that.
To be fair, I don't have a lot of other memories of the earlier years on the list either, but still, it seems strange that I spent nearly every summer for more than a decade playing baseball and my list of personal highlights or team lights is minimal. Even for someone who was as terrible at baseball as I was, you'd think there would be some substantial list of minor memories on my personal highlight reel to call out. Here's what little I remember.
There's an old joke that the best year of your baseball life is the summer you turn ten. For me, it was the summer I was twelve, which was the second and final year of Little League. It was also the year I volunteered to play catcher. Before that year that my position was "wherever I wouldn't do much harm, preferably on the bench" but I turned out to be a competent enough catcher to start consistently on the second team. That's another way of saying that we had two better catchers on the first team, but I had an ok arm for my age, and my eyes weren't bad enough to be an impediment yet. I wasn't going to start or even play on the first team, but although I don't remember any specific plays I remember having a good time as the oldest kid and de facto leader of the second team.
Babe Ruth is when most kids dropped out of youth baseball because they had gotten the message about whether they were any good at sports or not. I did not receive that message for baseball, so I spent a lot of time on the bench learning to keep score (a habit I maintain to this day) or to run the scoreboard (boring). I played a lot of "right field when we're ahead or behind by a lot" and not much more. I didn't set the world on fire hitting either. Frankly, I was short, slow chubby, nearsighted with terrible reflexes and a throwing arm that was both somewhat powerful and completely inaccurate. It didn't help my playing time that my school was a perennial power in baseball, so it had a lot of kids who were quite good. I was always the worst player in my grade (except the one year Pat played JV, sorry Pat if you read this), and usually the worst player on the team.
I was still having a lot of fun, so went out for high school ball when it started in ninth grade. Those three years of JV ball were the most fun I had playing baseball. In every other baseball team I played on the coach was the high school social studies teacher, who came across as someone who was convinced he would have made it to the show if he'd been taller than 5'4" (or whatever it was, he was definitely shorter than me). On the JV team, my classmate Chad's dad Curt was our coach, and by comparison he was very relaxed. He was a deer hunter and usually brought a package of venison sausage along for van rides to away games, which he was happy to share with the team.
In my early years of JV, I didn't play too much, but as we got older and my classmates moved up to varsity I was often good enough relative to the younger players to get substantial JV playing time. Plus, by this point several years of lifting weights for football had kicked in and I was very strong for my age. At this point I was still short, slow, and nearsighted with terrible reflexes, but I wasn't chubby so much as muscular and my throwing arm was quite strong but not still mostly inaccurate.
Most of the time I played right field, although my approach to routes and defense, especially given my eyesight, was "adventuresome" at best. For some reason, I also got stuck at third base a lot my last two seasons. You know, the position called "the hot corner" because it requires great reflexes to react, field the ball and throw it accurately to first base in time to catch the runner? Why Curt thought I would make sense at 3B given my poor reflexes, I can't tell you (maybe we didn't have another 3B), but I played there a bit. This led to one of the few clear memories I have of my baseball accomplishments.
We were playing a road game far from home against some team I don't remember (Enderlin maybe? I remember that every time we played them, which wasn't often, their coach had some poor guy on the team wearing one of those black rubber training jackets during warm ups). I was playing 3B. On the mound for us was Jeremy, who was the football coach's son and would end up being the starting QB my last two years of high school. I no longer recall any aspect of the game situation, but at some point the batter smashed an absolute rocket down toward 3B. Somewhat miraculously given my lack of reflexes, I did my best Brooks Robinson imitation and came up with the ball and threw the batter out at first by a step. This would have been a highlight for me in any game, but then a few batters later the exact same thing happened. Two great defensive plays at 3B in one game? I should have hung up my spikes right there!
Offensively, I profiled as a three true outcomes player, albeit with doubles instead of home runs. You know how batters talk about picking up the seams on the ball as the pitch comes in? With my eyesight, I was lucky if I could pick up the ball as it came in. With my eyesight and reflexes combined, I couldn't catch up to a good fastball, and anyone who could make the ball curve could make me look even worse than usual. Fortunately, most of the pitchers who had a good fastball or who could make the ball curve were playing varsity ball, so I mostly got to bat against an assortment of underclassmen who didn't have a plus pitch. This didn't mean I could hit the ball consistently, but when it did I usually hit it hard. I had a lot of doubles when the ball went in the air, and a lot of ground outs when it didn't.
I never hit a home run. The closest I got was during road JV game against St. Thomas-Valley. The bases were loaded when I came to bat. Somehow, I hit a hard high ball to the left-center gap. I have no idea how far out that outfield fence was, but it was about six feet high and the ball hit the top foot of the fence and fell to the ground. The center fielder got to it quickly, and I had to settle for a bases clearing double. It was absolutely the baseball highlight of my life.
However, it wasn't the play I remember the clearest. In my last year of American Legion ball, we were playing against Mayville in Grand Forks. On the mound for Mayville was the aptly named Dan Swift. Swift was a ridiculous physical specimen. It was rumored that he could throw the ball 90 miles an hour and had scouts following him. I doubt either rumor was true, but he could certainly throw it a lot faster than any other pitcher I saw or played against. Even our good hitters usually couldn't do anything with it. For some reason, the coach had me pinch hit against Swift.
As it happens, Swift and I knew each other. Due to some complicated Babe Ruth rules that I didn't understand, once you got to the end of season tournaments the team that won the tournament at each level could pick up a player or two from the defeated teams, or something like that. We'd won the first tournament and Swift was one of two kids we picked up. And he knew he hadn't seen me on varsity games since then! When I went to the plate, Swift told me he was going to throw it straight down the middle and to see what I could do with it. As it happens, I couldn't do a damn thing with it. He threw it straight down the pipe and I took three swings that came nowhere close to making contact before the ball blew past me and hit the catcher's glove right in the middle of the strike zone. As a metaphor for my entire baseball career, it wasn't very subtle.
I loved playing baseball, but that last year of American Legion ball was the end of the line. I did played intramural softball with the fraternity in college. I was one of the better players on the team, which probably explains why we were terrible. We actually threw a party when we won a game for the first time in something like five years. I also played one year of a beer league softball right after college. We were terrible there too. We were so terrible I sometimes played shortstop, which says everything about that team you need to know. Since then I've been happy to watch baseball instead of play it.