Two weeks ago there was a pop fly to our leftfielder in the 62+ (years old) baseball league I play in. We’re all creaky, a bit slow, don’t get a jump on things. He didn’t see the ball clearly as I watched. A disaster ensued.
When a routine fly ball to the outfield is hit in baseball, the player gets to the spot to catch, waits, looks up, gets their glove ready and captures the dropping sphere. That didn’t happen.
Baseball at the 62+ level is an adventure. This play proved it.
Rather than pounding his glove with an, “I GOT IT,” our leftfielder decided to do an imitation of riding a merry-go-round. AW OH! “This isn’t going to turn out well,” I thought.
First, you must understand this guy. He’s a bit slow to begin with, kind of “out there” when you have a conversation with him, wondering if he’s really all there. So, you get the sense he’s easily distracted.
That wasn’t the case on this play. He couldn’t get a bead on the ball. So he circled. And circled. It looked like a skit from “The Three Stooges,” with Curly “whoob whoobing” away trying to make things funny, when you realized this was serious and our leftfielder was lost.
He finally stabilized. Got his glove up at the last minute. And wham, lo and behold, it landed in his mitt. He caught it.
But the momentum of the fly also caught him. He stumbled to the side, collapsed and didn’t get up. At our age, you think, “heart attack.” It has happened. In our league, players have passed away in the dugout, probably from too much excitement.
He moved though, so we knew he was alive. Whew. But he couldn’t get up. Bad. We all ran out to tend to him.
He rolled on the turf, trying to stabilize his body to rise. Finally, he did so, limping titanically in pain as he trudged to the dugout. We put in a sub.
In the dugout, I asked what happened. “I have diabetes,” he replied, “and don’t see very well.”
That probably summarizes the old-time baseball profile: We all have maladies. Something has gone wrong in all our bodies, but we still play.
In his case, his vision was hazy. That sounds scary to me, because I still see well. Not being able to track the baseball with your eyes puts you in a fundamentally dangerous situation and I’m not so sure I’d keep playing if I were in his shoes. Regardless.
The sound of Theraguns hum in our dugout. Hamstrings, calf muscles, rotator cuffs, biceps are all getting a pounding from the massage ball between innings.
Routine popups go for hits because no one can move fast enough to get under the ball. No one can hit a home run over the fence because none of the pitchers throw hard enough to generate power when make contact with your bat. Guys steal bases and slide, and you wince in pain just watching them taking a big chance with multiple parts of their body by putting it in unusual, comprising and non-flexible positions. It hurts just to watch them. But, still, they do it. Over and over.
When I was little, I remember going to old-timer games at Yankee Stadium. Joe DiMaggio, Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra would get out there for an inning or two and toss the ball around and take a few cuts to make the fans happy. They seemed old and slow.
That’s us. We are old and slow. But still in the ballgame. Probably doing silly things we shouldn’t be doing anymore, yet still wanting to show a certain mastery in the world. Demonstrate we’ve got it.
Last week there was a hit to the outfield and the ball was relayed to our second baseman. He had the chance to easily throw out the runner at home. Several of us yelled loudly, “HOME,” so he would launch the ball to the plate. Instead, he held onto it, and goes, “No one said anything.”
Oh well, sometimes you can’t hear either. That’s the way the ball bounces. At least we can still swing a bat. Despite how much your back hurts the next day. Oh, and by-the-way, our leftfielder was fine. Knee was sore, but he played the next week.
When a routine fly ball to the outfield is hit in baseball, the player gets to the spot to catch, waits, looks up, gets their glove ready and captures the dropping sphere. That didn’t happen.
Baseball at the 62+ level is an adventure. This play proved it.
Rather than pounding his glove with an, “I GOT IT,” our leftfielder decided to do an imitation of riding a merry-go-round. AW OH! “This isn’t going to turn out well,” I thought.
First, you must understand this guy. He’s a bit slow to begin with, kind of “out there” when you have a conversation with him, wondering if he’s really all there. So, you get the sense he’s easily distracted.
That wasn’t the case on this play. He couldn’t get a bead on the ball. So he circled. And circled. It looked like a skit from “The Three Stooges,” with Curly “whoob whoobing” away trying to make things funny, when you realized this was serious and our leftfielder was lost.
He finally stabilized. Got his glove up at the last minute. And wham, lo and behold, it landed in his mitt. He caught it.
But the momentum of the fly also caught him. He stumbled to the side, collapsed and didn’t get up. At our age, you think, “heart attack.” It has happened. In our league, players have passed away in the dugout, probably from too much excitement.
He moved though, so we knew he was alive. Whew. But he couldn’t get up. Bad. We all ran out to tend to him.
He rolled on the turf, trying to stabilize his body to rise. Finally, he did so, limping titanically in pain as he trudged to the dugout. We put in a sub.
In the dugout, I asked what happened. “I have diabetes,” he replied, “and don’t see very well.”
That probably summarizes the old-time baseball profile: We all have maladies. Something has gone wrong in all our bodies, but we still play.
In his case, his vision was hazy. That sounds scary to me, because I still see well. Not being able to track the baseball with your eyes puts you in a fundamentally dangerous situation and I’m not so sure I’d keep playing if I were in his shoes. Regardless.
The sound of Theraguns hum in our dugout. Hamstrings, calf muscles, rotator cuffs, biceps are all getting a pounding from the massage ball between innings.
Routine popups go for hits because no one can move fast enough to get under the ball. No one can hit a home run over the fence because none of the pitchers throw hard enough to generate power when make contact with your bat. Guys steal bases and slide, and you wince in pain just watching them taking a big chance with multiple parts of their body by putting it in unusual, comprising and non-flexible positions. It hurts just to watch them. But, still, they do it. Over and over.
When I was little, I remember going to old-timer games at Yankee Stadium. Joe DiMaggio, Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra would get out there for an inning or two and toss the ball around and take a few cuts to make the fans happy. They seemed old and slow.
That’s us. We are old and slow. But still in the ballgame. Probably doing silly things we shouldn’t be doing anymore, yet still wanting to show a certain mastery in the world. Demonstrate we’ve got it.
Last week there was a hit to the outfield and the ball was relayed to our second baseman. He had the chance to easily throw out the runner at home. Several of us yelled loudly, “HOME,” so he would launch the ball to the plate. Instead, he held onto it, and goes, “No one said anything.”
Oh well, sometimes you can’t hear either. That’s the way the ball bounces. At least we can still swing a bat. Despite how much your back hurts the next day. Oh, and by-the-way, our leftfielder was fine. Knee was sore, but he played the next week.