| Straight
from the holler.
by "Buck" May 4, 2007 I love the game of baseball. I always have. However, I was never a very good player. Baseball is a game that is best suited to the smaller guy. Quick feet and good eyes are the tools that make you a great baseball player. I had neither. I was more suited to my first love, football. When you’re 6’5” and 300 pounds, as I am (Jeff Kay can support that claim since he’s the only one of you who’s seen me), baseball just isn’t your game. During the fall, I could throw bodies all over the place and derived great pleasure and satisfaction in breaking bones. I have several stories along those lines…but today—a baseball story of my youth. Although I wasn’t very good at baseball, I did have a few bright spots. One year while playing senior league (I guess that was our equivalent of Babe Ruth League) we were playing the Southwest Oil Yankees. I played for the Dotson Chevrolet Dodgers. The Yankees had a very tall, lanky pitcher who was some kind of good. He had two no-hitters before we played him and everybody was scared shitless of this guy. He would eventually be the starting quarterback of our high school football team and lead the team to a state title. He would also eventually lead the school’s baseball team into the state playoffs only to lose in the second round. He would also eventually be drafted, but wash out because he wasn’t THAT good. Anyhow, I stepped to the plate on this guy and the first pitch was a fastball that I only HEARD go by. Strike one. The second pitch, fastball inside that caused me to bail out, stumble, and fall down. STRIKE 2—it wasn’t that far inside. With an oh-2 count, I figured the next pitch wouldn’t be a strike. It wasn’t, it was high. I dug in and curled my lips and this guy fired a pitch that I actually made contact with…..the ball rocketed foul down the right field line and hit the scoreboard that was located just beyond the first base dugout. A description of this antique scoreboard is paramount to the story. It was one of those Fenway Park style contraptions where some goof sits out there hanging enormous steel numbers on a bunch of nails. The thing was rusty, made of steel, and very, VERY old. I’m fairly sure it was made out of a decommissioned World War I vessel. It had a big sign on top that read “Moe’s Firestone” and there was a HUGE tire sticking out of the top. The thing had been installed in the early 40’s when the field was a minor league baseball park and Babe Ruth did barnstorming there. When the ball I fouled away struck that scoreboard it sounded like a car wreck and EVERY SINGLE NUMBER flew off in all directions. The guy hanging the numbers was sitting on a ledge in front of the sign and had to bail out for fear he’d be cut by a jagged, rusty “2”. They had to stop the game for 20-minutes to repost all of the missing numbers. There was great arguing over what was actually there. The umpires were consulting both teams’ score books to get everything right. It was hilarious. However—it wasn’t over. When they finally got the scoreboard reassembled and flunky number hanger had reassumed his perch 10-feet off the ground. SuperPitcher had to throw a few warm-ups to reestablish his arm after a 20-minute cooling period. Yeah, like I needed that. He served up the next pitch, a fastball near the outside corner. I swung away and sent the ball screaming foul straight at the scoreboard. The number hanger had nowhere to run this time. The ball hit him squarely in the chest, causing him to stagger a bit. He fell off the sign, but his flailing about caused the entire structure to shift and that 5-Millon ton monster slowly crashed to the ground. The whole scoreboard collapsed! It just tilted backward and fell straight back and sped ground ward. The impact sounded like a plane crash and all I could see from the batter’s box was the sign disappear and a mushroom cloud of dust erupts from behind the visitors’ dugout. Fortunately nobody was back there behind the sign. They would have surely been killed. The number hanger had fallen toward the front so he was out of the impact zone. However he was rolling around holding his chest. Paramedics ran out and cut off his shirt to reveal a bruise the size of a hubcap in the middle of his chest. They had him on oxygen and all strapped down to the backboard as they hauled him out. He wound up with a cracked sternum and eventually recovered. The ambulance had to park on the field while they attended to him and the game was halted for another half-hour. Finally, I resumed the longest at-bat in the history of the game. The town’s version of Nolan Ryan tossed a few warm-ups and I dug in again. His first pitch hit me squarely in the back. I guess he was afraid I’d wipe out more signage. Those two incidents apparently unraveled the guy. When he hit me, it brought up the top of the order and he proceeded to get his tits lit up. The next six batters got hits—including two homeruns and this was only the third inning. We were leading six to nothing, before the game was called for good. We had no lights on our field, and they called the game due to darkness. We never made up or finished that game, but it was my at bat that lives on in local lore to this day. Buck Out |
