The Baseball Diaries Part I: Sweating and Shivering

Play ball!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a no kidding around baseball team.

Spring training started yesterday. This was the first official practice of the season, though the guys have been getting together and having “unofficial” practices all semester. I’m definitely not in prime shape, but I feel confident that I could come home from England in better shape than I was in when I was 15, before the slue of 2 injuries and a hospitalization that kept me from working out for 3 years. (And, though there is no possible way I’ll be able to continue with baseball when I get back, I’m already psyched to get back into boxing training when I get home! Roar!)

The first practice was yesterday. It was intense. It was real. These guys are taking this very seriously, and so am I. We started by playing catch for about 40 minutes and then went for a run. After the run we stretched and then broke off into two groups – infield and outfield. Regardless of what position you play, or WANT to play, everyone is doing everything. I started off in the infield group.

Our coach, whose name I cannot remember, played baseball at Cambridge University and is now a fire fighter. He asked me “what’s your preferred position?” “Catcher,” I reply. He chuckles, noticing I’m wearing a catchers mitt and says “how come I knew that… Well, if you’re the catcher, you don’t need to field ground balls right now.” So, he hands me a ball and a bat and asks if I can hit some ground balls for people to field. I throw one ball up and hit it – line drive over everyone’s head (pure luck). “A little lower!” he yells. This doesn’t work all to well, and after I’ve missed the ball twice he says “Just throw grounders then.”

He runs through instructions on fielding ground balls (which, though I was far away I was listening to intently because I probably needed the practice) he comes back to where I am and starts hitting grounders with the bat. “Alright catcher, catch!” he says, and instructs the guys fielding them to throw them back to me.

After one hits me in the shin, two fly over my head, and another hits my wrist hard enough to break the skin he yells out “You need to AIM. It doesn’t matter if you get to it if you throw it away!” He then informs them for EVERY BALL that I don’t catch, the person who threw it to me has to do 5 push-ups. Way to not put any pressure on me!

He wasn’t a dick about it at all though. If I just dropped it they didn’t have to… it was more the ones that were thrown 25 feet to my right and 15 feet above my head that earned push-ups. (And I still had to chase the hell after them, so I got my exercise in just fine.)

Then we did outfield drills. The team has JUST enough mitts for everyone, but the more senior members of the team got the better ones (simply because I didn’t want to be the new guy who went and grabbed the good mitt from one of the pitchers). So, I started out taking pop-flys in the outfield with the brand new (and not broken in) catchers mitt. That didn’t go very well. One of the pitchers quickly realized that all of the balls I was safely under were popping out of my glove BECAUSE of the glove, rather than my ability. So, we traded gloves, which went better.

Now, I’ve watched enough baseball to hear people say this 8,000,000 times. Let’s say there’s a really high pop fly that happens to be on a B-line to where the center fielder was already standing. It’s a fat, fly ball. The fielder pulls out “War and Peace,” reads the first 9 chapters, then takes a nap, and wakes up and catches it. People watch that and say “HE MAKES THAT LOOK SO EASY!!!” Catching a fat fly ball coming RIGHT to you, where you don’t even have to take a step IS really easy. Happened 3 times yesterday, I caught all 3.

The difficult thing about catching a fly ball is tracking it. This tiny white object is moving at incredible speed across a background of white clouds. You can see what direction it’s heading just fine, but how far away it is and how fast it’s going is difficult.

In professional baseball, if there’s a high fly ball to 2^nd base, the center fielder is suppose to back up the 2^nd basemen – he’s got to book it from center to 2^nd before the 2^nd basemen gets it, and be behind him when he does. Here’s how this probably started.

Back in 1800-whatever when major league baseball was first established, Sparky McCenterfielder saw the ball flying towards second and ran towards it because he couldn’t tell how far away it was. It sure LOOKED LIKE it was coming right to him. Someone teasingly asked him “Sparky! WTF, mate? The ball was like 200 feet in front of you!” Sparky, now embarrassed, smacks the person teasing him and says “I was… uhh… backing up the 2^nd basemen, you ninny!” and then everyone did this because they didn’t want to be out shined by Sparky. Stay tuned for more installments of “the interpretive history of Major League Baseball.”

After finishing outfield drills it was time for a scrimmage match, and for one of the teams: I got to be the catcher! Like, for real! Mask, chest protector, leg protector, mitt! I was the rock behind the plate!

As excited as I was, there was an immediate “oh shit…” It was probably 40* out this entire time. You could see our breath so clearly this looked like a meeting of the UEA Cigarette club. But, running around for 2 hours prior I was drenched in sweat… which was cooling my skin enough to cause me to be shivering. But this was my chance, nothing was going to stop me!

I suited up and squatted down behind home plate and the game started. My legs started shaking immediately. After 2 hours of running laps and chasing balls, having 197 pounds of weight being supported entirely by my quadriceps wasn’t what my body had in mind. But I toughed it out; this was no time for whining or wussing out!

I honestly can’t say how well I did. The pitcher I was catching for threw more wild pitches than the other pitcher (who was being caught by a guy named Chris, who everyone calls Stonewall… an appropriate name for a good catcher.) I was really tired, and my reflexes for diving out of my squat to catch a wild pitch a foot and a half off to my right were shot. But, I was catching! It was amazing. My dreams of being a little league catcher at 8 years old re-lived! My fantasies of becoming Jason Varitek accomplished! (well, not accomplished… but we’re on that path.) I can comfortably say that Stonewall would have caught better than me even if we were catching the same pitches, and we weren’t cold… but I still think I’d have done a lot better than I did yesterday.

As for batting, I took a walk on my first at bat, and got safely to third after that. I was tagged out at home on the second out, with bases loaded, after I stopped at third but the guy behind me kept going. He was caught in a pickle and with me touching third, all they needed to do was tag second to get him out, so I took off towards home hoping they’d be so caught up with the pickle, that they wouldn’t notice. But, of course they did, and I got tagged out by a good 4 steps. (Didn’t I mention in a previous post something about my ability to be stealthy?) Someone started yelling “slide” when the catcher had the ball but I knew that that would just result in me going from RUN mode to SIT mode and I wouldn’t make contact with the plate, even after the catch.

The whole thing was a blast. If Stonewall indeed got that nickname for being a catcher, than I think it’s very unlikely I’ll be able to work myself up to being the starting catcher this season. But, I say this with total sincerity; I’m just thrilled to be doing this. We’re playing between 5-7 games this entire season, and we practice 3 days a week. After 2 weeks of practice, I’ll have already had more time on the field catching than I would if I were to start every single game all season. And I do get to catch every practice.

I get to be the rock behind the plate! I get to wear the mask! I get to play baseball!