Little League

Found this while searching through my email for something else...sent it to a professor of mine...it was in response to a question about lessons learned when young, I think...

When I was ten, I was the starting centerfielder for the Athens Medics, a Little League team that was the most amazing team anyone had seen in that town in a long time--certainly more successful than the Ohio University sports teams were in the late sixties. We were undefeated for the three years I was on the team, though I had very little to do with our success during the first two.

I first joined the team when I was eight. It was supposed to be the last year of PeeWee baseball, but you could take a test and if you were skilled enough, you could be drafted up to the next level. You had to score 50% to be eligible for the draft, and the scoring was, as I recall, pretty subjective. They watched you hit, throw, run, slide, and catch, and gave numerical scores. I scored 51%, but I’ve always suspected that I got a break due to the fact that several of the judges were my father’s friends.

Anyway, I was drafted by the Medics, and I was thrilled. They were the Yankees of the Little League in Athens. The coach was a decent, religious man who never yelled, never allowed us to yell, and who drilled us constantly, teaching skills patiently, holding practices much more often than other coaches did. The team had a few ringers on it—a fireballing lefty who was the coach’s son, who was taller then me by half. I idolized this kid, who was three years older than me and seemed much, much older. He was a nice guy, who didn’t abuse the “rookies” like some kids did. His cousin, though, another lefthanded pitcher who came from Indiana for the summers to stay with the coach, was another matter. He was an arrogant, aggressive jerk, and no one on the team liked him, though he was talented. He picked on me a little at first, when his uncle wasn’t looking, but soon he just ignored me, completely ignored me, as if I weren’t worthy of his abuse any longer.

For the first two years of my tenure on the team, I was that sub you have to bring in because the rules dictate everyone gets to play. We usually had the games sewed up by the time I was put in the game. I was always stuck in right field, the position of dreamers and misfits, the place where you were least likely to hurt the team. And I always batted last. And I always struck out. Always. A personal victory could be counted if I actually made contact with the ball and fouled it back. But the coach was always supportive, and patient, and seemed to like me. I was a pretty sensitive kid, easily hurt, and after a while dreaded going to the games, because I knew I was going to fail, and my jock dad would be disappointed.

In the spring of my last year, something changed. I had a growth spurt, and my eye/hand coordination improved dramatically. My father tells me he immediately noticed something was different the first day he and I played catch that spring. I started throwing the ball overhand, instead of the sidearm style most often employed by weaker kids. I could also, all of a sudden, really fire the ball, with a lot of mustard on it. And I caught everything that was thrown my way. I didn’t seem to be afraid of the ball anymore, and most importantly, I was swinging the bat with authority, and made contact.

When practices began, the coach too noticed I was a different player than the timid boy of the previous year. He tried me out at third base, and when I took my first grounder and threw it across the diamond to the first baseman, it sailed five feet over his head and into the far dugout. The coach laughed and said, “ Been throwing with your dad, huh?” My dad was 6’3”.

By the time the season began, I was the starting centerfielder, because I had the strongest arm on the team. I also would play third base when our regular kid was out. I batted sixth, and ended the season with a .502 batting average, and most importantly to me, was the only kid on the team to never strike out all season.

The coach awarded me the Most Improved Player Trophy at the end of season banquet, and put his arm around me, and told the crowd I was an amazing kid, and most hardworking one he’d ever seen. But by the time of the banquet, I never wanted to see him again.

A week before the banquet we were playing the final game of the season, against the second best team. We were undefeated, as were they, and for once we weren’t rolling over the opposing team. Usually we had a 10 run cushion by the final inning (this was before the “mercy rule”), but this game was tight. As I recall, we were leading by one run in the bottom of the seventh inning (the final one in Little League), but the other team was at bat and had a runner on second base with two outs. Unfortunately for the other team, the “everybody plays” rule came into effect for them, and they had to let one of their lowly scrubs bat in this most crucial of moments.

He was a chubby little guy, and as I looked at him standing at the plate, his eyes looked huge, and I could see the fear in them from where I stood covering the third base line. Our coach stood up from the bench, walked halfway to the mound, and began clapping his hands, and repeating to his son, the pitcher. “ It’s OK, Scotty, it’s OK…he’s only a substitute…ONLY A SUBSTITUTE!”

I saw the look in the batters eyes. To this day I can’t describe it accurately. From 40 years away they look hurt, the pressure from a strange grownup, belittling him in front of everyone, his own parents included. I had been that kid for the previous two years. I looked at my coach, and I don’t think I was ever so disillusioned in my life. To think he’d preached these rules about respect and sportsmanship, wouldn’t even let us say, “ Hey batter batter batter” because it was razzing the other team, and we were supposed to be better than that, you don’t razz people, you support your own guys, but here, when the game was on the line, and the chips were down, he stood in front of the world and announced that this little kid was a loser, and nothing to be worried about.

This man used to take me to church with his family, and invited me once to go on a picnic at a local lake with his family. He was a deacon in his church, and a swell guy. And I learned a bitter lesson about people under pressure, how most times the best intentions crumble under adversity. He was a great coach, the best teacher of skills I ever saw, and unwittingly he taught me a lesson about character I’ve never forgotten.

I’d like to be able to tell you the chubby little substitute struck gold, and caught a break and hammered a ball down the left field line, and slide into home for the winning run. That’s the Hollywood ending, the one we want rather than the one we ought to have. No, he struck out on three pitches, the Medics won again, and years later, the substitute could well be writing an essay just like this one, about the time an opposing coach humiliated him in front of the world, and it was that moment that was in his mind right before he chopped up his whole family.

But that’s, as they say, another story. But I will give you a Hollywood ending that’s a true. About fifteen years later, Randy, the jerk from Indiana who used to pick on me, had relocated to Athens permanently, and was playing in a softball league, and got into a violent argument with the umpire, so violent that the umpire was fearful for his safety, and the Athens Police was called to escort Randy from the ballpark, and yours truly, by then one of Athens Finest, got to drag his beer sodden ass off the field and into my cruiser. Life, my dear Dr. Jan, can be sweet sometimes.

The Fatal Glass of Beer 1

In honor of all the snow we've had--which looks a lot like the snow in this film--I thought I'd post this. I have very fond memories of watching this with my father years ago, and the two of us laughing so hard we couldn't catch our breaths. I seem to remember every movie or TV show I ever laughed at with my dad, which includes all the Pink Panther movies, and Charlie Brown's Halloween show...

Movie Titles With Colons in Them: Bad Idea

I have never seen a good movie with a colon in the title. Or any punctuation, for that matter, except an apostrophe. It always seems to me that a group of marketers got together in a room and tried to settle on one title, but could only narrow down the possibilities to two, and as a compromise they put a colon in there. Roger Ebert has a list of movie cliches and rules, and that should be in there: Movies with punctuation in the title always suck.

Also sucking is any movie with the producer's name in the title, as in Berry Gordy's The Last Dragon. Or the writer's name.

Our Wedding Dog

Tonight, I have been sitting in my chair with my little dog curled under my arm, and we have spent a long time looking in each other's eyes, as we have been wont to do for many years. Pepper is 14 years old, a Yorkie/Schnauzer mix, and her formerly brown face is white now, and she spends most of her days drowsing on chairs and couches, or on any convenient lap. She is a stubborn old gal, and if she wants to jump up into my chair, and wriggle and push till she claims half the seat for herself, well, who am I to argue? Such a venerable old lady deserves all that she wants, and mostly what she wants is to be allowed to nap and feel the old clock inside her wind its way down.

We got her the weekend we were engaged. Dani and I were living in an attic apartment on the Hilltop, and the guy in the downstairs apartment raised and trained little terriers, and when Dani and I came home from a weekend's touring performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream (where we had announced our engagement to the stunned cast), he was outside with his kids playing with some little dogs, and when he saw us he asked if we wanted a dog. It seems he had given his mother one of his little puppies 2 years earlier, and when she moved to an apartment complex that didn't allow pets, she had to return Pepper to her son.

I think he was asking out of reflex, just something you say as a conversation starter, especially if you are a dog trainer. But I looked at her, and though it sounds lame, something passed between us. Maybe I was open because I had just gotten engaged to a woman I was deeply in love with, and had just finished a wildly successful weekend's worth of performances, and here was an offer to begin something like a little family. It felt right. I looked at Dani and she laughed--she later said she could tell right away this was going to happen. So we took her upstairs.

I spent a week holding her like a baby, protecting her from my cat Sugar, who was deeply offended that a dog had been brought into the mix. Sugar never warmed to her, and never missed a chance to swat her and send her yelping into another room. That whole week we looked into each other's eyes, bonding the way I imagine parents do with new-born babies. When the weekend came, we had to leave to do another set of shows out of town, and I asked the fellow downstairs to watch her for us. All weekend I worried she wouldn't remember us, that the week-long bonding hadn't been enough, but when we came home, it was like a scene from a movie: Pepper was in the yard playing with one of the neighbor's kids, and when she saw me, she ran top speed and launched into my arms and licked my face all over. That's when I knew she was ours for keeps.

Right away she established herself as my chair companion, and later she became part of our sleeping arrangement as well. Dani on my left, Pepper on my right, under my arm. I became quite used to this--in fact, once when I was in the hospital for a surgery, Dani was concerned I wouldn't sleep without a little creature nestled under my right arm, so she bought a little stuffed dog to tuck in with me during my week long stay.

Pepper has endured many moves, and many comings and goings of other pets, and not always happily. In fact, never happily. I don't think she has quite understood what we thought we were doing bringing all those other critters into the house. Especially Sonny, out Golden, who spends a generous part of his day, every day, for the last 6 years, finding ways to annoy her.

It has always been Mark, Dani and Pepper to our families. When my mother calls, her sign off is "give my love to Dani and Pepper." Family members have actually had her for sleepovers--she used to go with my sisters on their camping trips. Actors I worked with years ago, after getting back in touch, will ask after her health--she had a brief career on the stage herself, playing Toto in WoO, Sandy in Annie, and the family dog in Cheaper By The Dozen. But she's retired now. She lies on her warm blankets and dreams of her former stage glory.

Someday soon, the unbearable will happen. She has a bad heart murmur, and the vet assures us this will be the thing that takes her out. The day I got that diagnosis, two years ago, I drove her home from the vet, after first stopping at the store for some treats. I held her for a while, and we looked into each other's eyes, as we often do. Her bristly intelligent gaze was a bright as the day we got her ( and still is). I felt better that the knowledge of mortality is not a gift given to a dog. They live entirely and utterly in the moment. This makes it easier. We are entrusted with that knowledge for them.

So, these days, I let her have her way. She eats when she feels like it, goes outside whenever she asks, and sleeps when and wherever she chooses. She has given great value, our little wedding dog. She deserves our respect, and our love. Those of us who are childless need an outlet for our parenting instincts, I believe, and Pepper is in many ways my first child.