If Pitching Machines Were People...

Since the beginning of April, I made the weekly pilgrimage to the batting cages in town as part of my spring training routine for this season. I changed my diet in the off-season to a seafood only, vegetarian diet, which helped with staying in shape.

In the time spent at the cages, however, I noticed the pitching machines have different personalities as well as different speeds.

The Dirty Player

He doesn't have good stuff, so after you hit his best pitch he will pitch inside just to get you off the plate. He also hates left handed batters, like REALLY!

The Angry Dad

The pitches are slow, yes, but they drop suddenly for no good reason. It also doesn't help the balls are as small as ball bearings in a child's bicycle. Not good when you bring your date to the cages, and you're swinging and missing. It takes a few pitches to know figure out what the machine is doing, so don't lose heart.

The Jealous Ex

Everything is seventy-five mph or above. He hates people. He wants to embarrass you, plain and simple. Unless a member of the Toronto Blue Jays arrives, when the cages are empty, and hits every single fastball the machine can dispense, no one challenges him.

One unfortunate note, before I go: There's that moment, when you get that perfect pitch, and you foul it off your bat the wrong way. The ball bounces into the dirt, and hits you... there.

There are usually kids around the cages waiting, so you grab your head instead. It's only for a moment, however, as the pitching machine throws another ball your way. Now, you're swinging and standing like a penguin balancing on two ice floats!

As if you didn't look goofy enough! o_O

The Stain

There is no feeling in the sport of baseball or in any team sport, worse than believing you single-handedly lost a game for your entire team. Whether rightly or wrongly, that feeling belongs to one person, and it is that person's choice to live with that feeling, or let that feeling live off them.

Six years ago, an unsure rookie worked his way up from an unsteady right fielder to the backup shortstop position in his softball team in the city weekend league. On a rainy August afternoon, he slid towards a soft, catchable pop fly and instead bounded it toward home plate with his left knee thus loading the bases. Two pitches, a triple in deep left centre field, three runs batted in, and a lost lead later, the shortstop was inconsolable, and his position as the #2 shortstop guy was gone. In the end, all that remained was me, and a stain.

I still have the shirt from that year, as well as the dirt stain on his left shoulder. After booting the pop fly, I rolled over and slammed his glove before getting to his feet, and as a result of rolling over the stain emerged on his shirt. That Saturday night, under a running faucet of warm water, and a near empty box of bleach powder, I scrubbed, brushed, rubbed, wet, and pounded the stain with bleach until all that remained was a small yet noticeable patch of brown. The hours spent cleaning by hand did next to nothing, nor did the cleaning absolve me of guilt for costing the team the game. The experience did teach me something about the game of baseball, which I love though you wouldn't know that from my demeanour that night, but it also taught me about who I was.

Don't laugh! That picture got me four hundred hits on
ChristianMingle! o_O

Every grass stain on my baseball pants, and every dirt patch on my shirt tells a story. Stories of heroic deeds*, thrilling upsets, overcoming injury, fear, confidence, arrogance, victories and defeats, but the common thread, literally and figuratively, is there was someone who always tried his best.

• The mud spray all over my white baseball pants with blue piping: During a rainstorm, I ran through a puddle to field a ground ball.
• The countless black baseball socks with holes in the shins from various attempts at making diving, no, heroic catches in the outfield* (Hi Kevin).
• Standing in the middle of right field in dry, weathered, red cleats, and watching two groups of people shouting and yelling at each other during a championship game because the rain & lightning started in the last inning, and members of the losing team, which was batting, thought the leading team on the field was trying to call the game prematurely.
  
  

  

  New rule: If you don't wear your stirrups or socks up to
  Cardinals relief pitcher Pat Neshek level height, you'll be
  ejected from the game.

I don't want to bore you other baseball and softball stories from the past twenty-five years of my life, but with every big fish story there is a sense of missed opportunity and dread. Why did I leave that baseball player with the stain on his shirt at that field? Baseball was not only my escape, but a chance to become someone else: A dependable, capable, focused, and sometimes goofy teammate, competitor, and friend. Why can't I be that kind of baseball player away from the diamond? Why can't I be that kind of person now? Who am I? Am I making sense? Who am I?

I don't pretend to know all the answers, nevertheless I would like to say I'm closer to being a synthesis of regular Phil and baseball player Phil now than I was in 2008 or 2011. Baseball is a team sport based on a chain of events by individual people. o_O If that makes no sense, then baseball is a series of games within a game, and if baseball mirrors life than maybe I'm just an individual trying to play the "game" within a game, only I'm on a team full of teammates wearing stained shirts.

I hope we're on the same baseball team, and I hope you're not tired of me, and want to put me on waivers?! Please don't do that; who will make all of those heroic catches in the outfield?*

* - Insert eye roll here

Life On The Disabled List (From MAJOR LEAGUE GOOFBALL)

I broke my finger on May Day at a construction site, so I get to start the softball season on the fifteen day disabled list. What joy! ^_^ (Tears everywhere...)

I thought this Sunday was my first game of 2014, but instead it looks as though June, if not the week following the May Long Weekend, will be when I make my triumphant return to the glorious game (I'm Canadian).

Michael Cuddyer, like most Major League ballplayers, is no stranger to injury,
and the DISABLED LIST. Blogger Phil Wood shares his first experience
on the dreaded list, and what that could mean to him personally.

There is something quite romantic and tragic about awaiting the return to the game, and literally crossing the foul line, or entering the batter's box to start a softball game. I'm leaving emotional baggage, stress, physical restrictions, my job, car payments, credit card bills, lack of a long-term and meaningful partner, the demands of my parents, and my identity behind to play a sport, and become a new person - a useful person. Since 2008, I stepped over the foul line, and became a different person each time...

• #7 NITRO
• #10 KNOCKOUT
• #19 JUDAH
• #22 McCUTCHEN
• #66 STEAMPUNK
• #74 MERLIN
• #82 HOLLYWOOD
• #87 MONDAY

As long as I wasn't me, things would be alright. With this injury, however, I can't help but be me. It will be a new sensation to watch your team win, lose, coast, or struggle and not be in the trenches alongside them. I found a note in my kitbag, which I scribbled years ago, during a team practice a couple of weeks before my injury.

1. Goals for the Summer:
1. Improve fielding
2. Improve batting
3. Better communicator
4. Better person
2. Don't take things personal: 
1. Your actions will/won't bring the world crashing down around you.
2. Stay in control.
3. Trust people.
3. JESUS is a cool guy who saved the world and brought it back with the "fundamentals" (Matthew 22:36-40: Deuteronomy 6:5, Leviticus 19:18)

At the bottom of my note, I drew a picture of a dude dressed as one of the Kansas City Royals. He is wearing a catcher's mitt, and he has a giant nose. I'll scoot down to the game Sunday night, and support the team if I can. I'm also on painkillers, so coupled with the injury to my hand I can't drive for a couple of weeks, and that's crazy! >_<

Backwoods Baseball, Part 2

Forsaking the warning signs on my dashboard, I make the turn towards the baseball diamond, unsure of where the road would take me. There are some things a man can replace, such as gasoline, but you cannot barter the trust of one's teammates.

Bounding over a couple of hills like an ant traversing the fringes of a checkerboard patterned tablecloth, my car arrives at another intersection: One path leads back to civilization, while the other heads off into uncharted territory and a playing field. I chose the latter, and in a short while I enter the quaint, unmapped town of Kilbride.

From what I could tell, the only prominent landmarks are a street leading to the main residential area of town, the fire hall that consists of relaxed firefighters enjoying the dusk of a summer day, and the school. The Kilbride Public School, which represents the door out from sleepy town Ontario to the big, busy world, is the place where my baseball dreams of grandeur and heroism lead me. My thoughts, as I pulled into the parking lot, turn to the meter measuring my gasoline, and a pool deep enough for a flea to drown remains. I made it.

Alas, as I find the teammates, a few more straggle in before we begin to wonder aloud: Where is the other team? o_O No sooner does the thought cross our minds then the sound of big motors and pickup trucks pull into the school disturbing the quaint peace of the valley. Their numbers are large, their choice of bats is stellar, their size is towering (well, a few of them, still...! O_O), and the odds are not in our favour.

As the game progresses the score gets wider, the breaks are beating us, and the grounders are a little further away from our grasp. Finally, the worries about gasoline are the last things I am thinking about as I head to the dugout for the final time after flying out to left field. The misadventure into the lovely town of Kilbride taught me a valuable lesson: Be prepared (DUH!), and what is more to enjoy the journey. If you don't stop to notice the Mom & Pop restaurant, the manicured rose-laden park, the old-time railroad crossings and street lamps, and the strawberry farm along the way then you will wonder how you arrived at your destination, place in life, or age in the first place!

An excursion can last thirty minutes, but the stories within that journey are limitless. ^_^

Backwoods Baseball, Part 1

I play baseball three times last week, each game for a different league in and around my hometown. My third game last week, however, was not in a usual, well lit part of suburbia, but out in the agricultural, rolling hills, and backwoods of Canada without the banjos.

First, there is my hometown of Mississauga, then a little west of there is Oakville, Burlington, and then a town called Guelph. This game I was about to participate in started almost immediately after work ended, so I not only had to get my gear from home and change clothes, I had a fair amount of driving to do. I'm a product of the 1990s, so when I need directions on how to arrive at a destination I print them out on 8.5"x11" paper, place the directions on the seat next to me, and drive the route the direction tell me to travel. No GPS, no ambient female voice telling me I made a wrong turn, and no room for error!

The major road to the diamond is a "line": The Guelph Line. Effectively, it's the border between urbanization and suburbia, and agriculture and secluded, sleepy towns like Lowville, Churchville, and Inglewood. Like the childhood home of NFL quarterback and future hall-of-famer Brett Favre, you can't find "Kilbride" on a conventional map. Google found "Kilbride Park", which is behind the elementary school, but Google believes the road to Kilbride is a straight line. Ladies and gentlemen, the Guelph Line is not a straight line; it's a border, and borders are never simple.

I took many slights and curves to stay on the Guelph Line burning the last of precious gasoline as I left, obeying traffic signs, and annoying the locals behind my automobile by doing so. I wasn't lost - I was...taking my time. As the clock indicated, throughout my journey through the Ontario backwoods, I had to put the pedal to the metal, yet it was during the many twists and turns I discovered I was only halfway to my destination when I arrived at Twiss Road (no pun intended).

Guelph Line & Twiss Road: I reached a cross roads. As the little Chief Engineer Scotty cackled in my head that "the engines aren't going to last much longer!", I eyed the little Esso gas station across the street. There was no telling how much longer the journey would last, and there was only enough gas left over for a few more kilometres.

If I get gasoline for the car, I would be late for the game. If I drove on ahead, I could be lost in the Ontario underbrush and thickets armed with baseball bats and a Los Angeles Dodgers hoody I purchased from the online store for $51 after discount.

What would I do? What would I do?

For My New Followers: Forgiveness

I wrote this a couple of years ago on my old webpage. Every now and then, or at least when the baseball season starts up again, I like to fix it up and re-post it. It is my favourite post, and even though I wrote about better things since then, I like reading it over every year just because the message is so true ^_^ This is not only for my new followers, but also to those who follow my blog and the "I AM NOT GIRL CRAZY" series may not be their cup of tea. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Remember your greatest mistake, your most embarrassing moment, or a moment in time you wish to erase or redo. Picture it happening in your mind again, and then again. Now, picture your family, friends, indifferent strangers, enemies, and millions of other people all over the world watching that same mistake you made.

Now picture this...

At the moment, there is anger because Armando Galarraga did not get what he "earned" through 8 2/3 innings of solid pitching. He "deserved" or "earned" the rewards that come from hard work, second effort, and loyalty to a cause. However, as is in life, most people on this planet do not get those things as rewards for their hard work or loyalty. Should baseball be the exception?

There are facebook groups dedicated to the ridicule of the man, who accidentally and apologetically, took the rewards away from Galarraga. The insults and the photos are an unfair smearing of a man that devoted his life and his energy to the game; some, if not all of what is said on Facebook and other websites by 'bloggers' and 'pundits', is too embarrassing and shameful for words.

I remember when my Dad umpired games here in Canada; he umpired a host of baseball and softball games in his community throughout the 80s and 90s, and he still has the gear and rulebooks in the garage of his house in Mississauga. He told me of a textbook tag at second base he ruled safe, when the world and everyone in it knew the runner was out. He lost his passion to umpire afterward, because the memory of that one moment took the fun away from umpiring. When I remember that story, I think of how I would act in that position. How would I react? What would I do?

Galarraga reacted like any of us would at that moment, but unlike any of us he accepted it with the grace and calm that only he could. After all, name another pitcher on the verge of perfection who had the rug snatched from underneath his feet? Neither could I. Perhaps there is a lesson all of us could learn from this experience. Not about instant replay, coach's challenges, base sensors, or electronic strike zones, because those regulate, not terminate, our frustrations with life.

Baseball hinges on the foul lines of fairness and controversy, the wrong call, the irate managers, and the umpteen million dollar a year third baseman from the Yankees my friend Ana hates so much. However, we still love the game, and we go for the unfairness, controversy, irate managers, and overpaid all-stars on THAT team. What is more, life is about unfairness, too, and yet we still wake up everyday and live each day for different reasons. Do we "deserve" perfection, the right call, sneakers, public transportation, and televisions preloaded with five hundred channels? Do we "deserve" a roof over our heads, food, water, or life? If so, for whom, over whom, or by whose authority?
Now picture this...

What Armando Galarraga and umpire Jim Joyce taught us is even when our intentions were good, we will fail. If each of us lives with the desire to see the best for everyone, then what would our planet, our cities, our neighbourhoods, and our lives resemble? What if we spent less time thinking about what we "deserve" and more time figuring out how to "bless" each other with what we have? If we had the capacity to forgive or be forgiven, what would our lives look like?

Probably, we would all be safe at home.