A Baseball Haze
By Tom Grout
February 20, 2008
Spring training opened for pitchers and catchers this week and I have to tell you, my body may be up here in the frozen tundra but my mind is town there in Fort Myers Florida. I have a bad case of either spring or cabin fever. I’m thinking of green grass, playing catch, and listening to the crack of the bat and baseball chatter. I am in a dreamy daze.
I try to read everything I can about what is going on down there about the Twins and now that I have this blog I can say I’m doing that as part of my job. You see I am doing research so I am better at informing you good readers about what is going on. Yeah and if you believe that I got some swamp land to sell you.
Who am I fooling; I read all of that stuff because I love baseball. I love everything about the game, and I mean the game itself. I love the field, the smell of the leather from your glove, shagging fly balls in the outfield, making a nice pickup, throwing batting practice and the feel of the bat when you get hold of one. The smell of pine tar is better than anything they can bottle, and turning a double play is about as high of a high you can get. The only thing that comes close to that high is the batter giving it his best swing and not even coming close to the pitch you just threw, better yet is if it is strike three.
The game of baseball and softball has been such a big part of my life. Last summer was the first summer since I was about five years old that I did not play softball or baseball and I missed it. I have been fortunate enough to have played 37 years of slow pitch softball in leagues either in Elbow Lake and Fergus Falls and tournaments all over the place. I have also played 20 years of baseball after I graduated from high school so obviously I did both baseball and softball for a number of years. I have also coached baseball and softball at the high school level for 15 years. It was fun to watch the kids develop right before your eyes.
My favorite baseball team to coach was West Central High School’s Junior varsity a few years back. The sophomores on that team graduated last year. What was fun with this group was they were so smart and picked things up so fast and soon our minds became one during games. When I wanted to do a certain thing or move they were already waiting for me to give them the go ahead. They knew what I was thinking and we were on the same page, I can’t tell you how much fun that is. This same group of kids I coached in 7th, 8th, and 10th grade and were a pleasure to be associated with.
I also had a lot of fun with a group of girl softball players. I had coached the 8th graders one year then the next year went up to Junior Varsity with them. One thing I found out about myself is that I am more competitive as a coach than I was as a player and I was very competitive as a player. I remember with the JV team we traveled to Frazee and before the game I was having a nice visit with their coach. Toward the end of the conversation I asked him what their record was and he said they hadn’t lost yet. Oh how the competitive juices started to flow. I then excused myself to go talk to my team before the game started.
I get the girls all together and start telling them that Frazee was undefeated and how we couldn’t let them stay that way. We were going to have to play our best game to do that and all that rah rah stuff. They must have gotten used to me because they were just kinda smiling at me and then our first baseman, who was standing next to me, said, “You know coach, we’re pretty good too you know.” She was right; we hadn’t lost a game yet either. She had a big triple in the game as we were still undefeated as we took the bus ride home.
Baseball wasn’t just a big part of my life with all the hours I spent on the field, growing up baseball was kind of an escape. I grew up mostly in the 60’s and especially toward the tail end of that era there was a lot of unrest in the world. Turning on the news you saw clips from the day’s happenings of the Vietnam War and was given the casualty counts of the day. There were protests turned violent involving the War and race with the topper being the violent protests at the Democratic Convention. A president and presidential candidate where shot along with a man who preached peace.
Baseball helped take me away from all of that. Whether I was out on the field with my glove and bat and ball, or watching the Twins on TV or opening up a pack of baseball cards and finding Willie Mays or Harmon Killebrew’s face looking back at me. It was the one sane thing in a world that was insane.
The game will survive this new stain of steroids because it has survived through many other things that have tried to bring it down. My favorite baseball quote that describes how I feel comes at the end of the book Ball Four by Jim Boutan. It says:
“You spend your whole life gripping a baseball and then in the end you find it was the other way around all along.”
Your best blog entry to date!
Very well done!
Your excellent writing takes me back in time to a great time. I was thinking about the same kind of things all day yesterday. What set me off was first, I watched the space shuttle land on TV and seeing all the green grass and birds flying in Florida made me think of baseball. Secondly, it was 31 below on my thermometer and I looked across our section, and here I see my father walking home from town. My parents live on the south side of the section I live on and everyday Dad walks to town (1.5 miles)and back to drive school bus. He's been driving for 50+ years. Most people would be surprised that he still walked on such a cold day but I knew he would be. He never has done things the easy way and takes on the challenges life offers over time. We milked cows when I was growing up and we never had great equipment so everything was done the hard way, by hand. But at the end of a hard day, the milking was done, and he would be walking back to the house to rest, but here would be two kids (my brother and I), waiting for him to be done so that he could hit us ground balls, of course not even thinking about how tired he might be. But he would, and he'd hit grounders to us until it was too dark to see. And I don't remember him ever saying no, we even got him a chair to sit on a few times and he'd hit them to us while he sat. His endurance yesterday reminded me of his endurance then and how much fun I had fielding those ground balls. It takes me back just to write about it. If you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to go look at some of my childhood baseball cards now, I'm kind of in the mood.
Amazing, you boys of baseball, you. Baseball has been a seemless web in my life as well. Tom, your description is beyond words, and Sandbags, your reminiscence brought a tear to my one good eye. & Bibs, couldn't agree with you more.
Yesterday morning I emailed my brother, now retired in Texas. He goes to Florida to watch spring training each year. My thoughts were similar to yours. for what its worth, here's a part of what I emailed him:
Pitchers & catchers are there.
You've got tickets & reservations.
Your bags are packed & sitting next to the door.
You play golf to pass the time until you hit the road.
Its 29 below here -- no sign of global warming this morning.
I shoveled the walk two days ago & its blown back full.
The car seat warmer is malfunctioning -- but only
on the driver's side. No clouds today.
The sun dogs will be out.
But that's how it is, here, at some point
The sun will pick up more strength,
the days will lengthen, and sometime, yes, at some point,
will come the glorious (what you call) blooming of the tundra.
In three seasons the Twins move into their new home
a real ballpark, downtown, by the Target Center,
by the river, by the incinerator;
by design priced out of my comfort zone.
Without Johan & the Silvanator the boys take the field at Hammond,
and then north, bringing, maybe, some Met cadets.
They will be astonished --
Inside the Teflon you can't see the sun dogs.
Two more years of the plastic grass.
And then, will the seat warmers work?
As I'm reading how much you love the game of baseball and softball andremeniscing about the game...I was thinking of my days playing summersoftball with "Peas" and Heather. We had SO much fun. Do you remember thetime we were playing Hoffman and Mr. Walters was their coach, and Geoff wasumping behind the plate? For some reason Geoff had to leave in the middle ofthe game so you ran down from the comfort of your lawn chair at the top ofthe hill to take his place. I was pitching..and the batter hit a grounderright to me and instead of throwing it home to get the runner on 3rd..I wasabout to throw it to 1st to get the batter out. You yelled at me to throwhome..and then suddenly realized what you did (you were umping) and coveredyour mouth quick and looked right at Mr. Walters..and you both busted outlaughing. He understood of course...but it was funny!! Needless to say, Ifollowed your advice as I always do..and threw home and eliminated a run!:)Way to take sides UMP! :)
This came as an email from my daughter after reading this blog. She hasn't figured out how to post on this yet. Tom
I'm done looking at baseball cards now. I believe it was TDog that suggested "Brazen" as the one word for pro sports now. Excellent choice, better than my "chocolate". I'm still thinking on it though.
I remember umping a game that Geoff was pitching and I had a big strike zone as an ump. Geoff couldn't quite get into that zone though and he had a lot of walks he gave up. I felt bad and he felt bad but you know where most kids would complain or try and make the ump look like the problem? He didn't, he took it like a man and just dealt with it. I was impressed with him for doing that. Of course Tom was giving me the dickens from that lawn chair but I made it through.
Brazen, Ludicrous, etc., oh if only Howard Cossell were still here to help us when we need a thesaurus!
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