Brooks Robinson

Thanks.

I found another quote about Brooks.

Norman Rockwell met Brooks in 1971 and, because Brooks was the quintessential American ballplayer, Rockwell did a portrait ("Gee, Thanks Brooks!").

Someone wrote,

"If Brooks did not exist, Rockwell would have invented him."

I'll officially make a challenge to Cal Beverly and all of those pencil pushers over at the Citizen, to put up or shut up.

You Sniffles can coach, although, I'll use your other adopted name without the #$%@.

I prefer 1st base, because I can't throw.

So Muddle, are you in? What about Jeffc, Hack, Spyguy, and everyone, except, well. Okay, I won't stop other bloggers from joining. But frivolity and fun is the goal. We can have our differences and still have some common ground, i.e. a baseball diamond in which to interact civilly

Our name would be the Citizen Bloggers! Unless you can think of a better one.

So who all is in?

The batter order is being drawn up as we speak.

Are they still in operation?

And they can be helpful, but, a real pitcher is more important. They have batting cages in Fayetteville, just east of the square, one in Tyrone too.

I'm even up for playing a game of 500. I assume you know what that game is.

Seriously, when our team played, half the team had braces on their knees or arms or both. We played for the thrill of the game. Winning is fun, but the play is what it is all about. I really have very little memory of how many games my teams won or lost. I do remember the experience of being out there, under the lights.

Bull Durham explains it better than I will ever be able to do.

"I believe in the Church of Baseball. I've tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. . . . I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn't work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology. You see, there's no guilt in baseball, and it's never boring... which makes it like sex. . . . Making love is like hitting a baseball: you just gotta relax and concentrate. . . .You see, there's a certain amount of life wisdom I give these boys. . . .I've tried 'em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball."

100 for flies and liners.
50 for hops.
25 for grounders.
Add to 500.

Then it's your turn to bat.

How about "pepper"?

I might make my way to the batting cages. Exercise for the sake of exercise is too boring to stick with. Maybe I can shed some pounds, retrain my eyes, and get my timing back.

I have really enjoyed reading the stories about playing baseball. What a refreshing change!

One of my sons has coached rec ball for years. T ball, softball, basketball, you name it. He has coached politicians children, attorneys children, teachers children. All the kids love him. Wouldn't it be a hoot if he coached your children.

I come from a large family. We used to play softball every Sunday afternoon. Sometimes we would play a local coed church team. We beat them every time. Some of the guys on the church team got mad and wouldn't play us anymore.

BTW My granddaughter pitched a shutout a few weeks ago!

John, have fun coaching your son. It is so much fun watching the little ones play.

I'm so stinking out of shape right now that if I were to spend an hour chasing down fly balls I would spend the next week in traction.

Cy has (or had) a warning at the bottom of his posts: Blogging may cause a sedentary lifestyle. How true! Same thing with obsessive writing. I've spent the past few months freaked out about making deadlines, and so spent much time either SITTING and reading or SITTING and writing. Need to shed some lbs.

Imagine a bunch of old dudes out trying to re-live their childhoods, getting up a sandlot game.

We'll choose captains, then choose teams. Decide who gets to bat first by the traditional procedure: whoever ends up with his hand on the knob of the bat. (Remember? You can grab the neck with a full fist on the way up, or, to be strategic, just use scissors.) We can play pitcher's hand, closed fields, and ghost runners. Oh, yeah. And in sandlot, thyere is often the rule against pitchers: "No junk."

If other, unwelcome, bloggers show up, we'll yell, "The game is locked!"

Yeah guys, I think as long as all of us would be quite out of shape it wouldn't be too embarassing.

Maybe we should establish a weight class ala boxing, so we don't have too many young turks showing us up! And yes, Richard, softball would be just fine!

This would be a great way to get back in shape too, at least to a small degree. I just can't motivate myself to hit a gym or a treadmill, etc.

Just taught my son the other day about ghost runners. We always threw the ball back to the pitcher and if he caught it before the runner got to second, the runner was out (you couldn't stop at first with a single cause we only had like 6 or 8 players).

With enough lead time, we could get a film crew from "America's Funniest Videos" there...we'd be a shoe-in for the $100K prize!

Just think....Muddle, attempting to recreate the acrobatics of his youth, with a trademark headfirst slide into second base....

....Richard Hobbs, for whom the phrase "a spectacular catch of a routine fly ball" was invented...

...John "Babe" Munford...calling his homerun shots...

the possibilities, as they say, are endless!

John,
Why don't you get Sageadvice, i.e. Cal, to sponsor a bloggers team this year. I'm sure it would be filled.

I played on a team last year, with several older black women, who could have stood to lose a few pounds. But I was amazed at how well they played, it was awesome. No they were not better than me, --unless you used some archaic method of weighing abilities, such as batting averages, throwing and running errors, and the ability to shag an easy fly ball. Otherwise, I put them to shame.

Tim Hudson, of the Braves, actually played on our opponents team, and everytime he came up, he would hit a long screaming fly to where these ladies were, and without batting an eye, they would charge the line drive and put him out everytime he came up to bat. It was a beautiful thing to watch. Their gloves almost came off everytime they caught that line drive in the web of their gloves.

I'll suggest this, lets have a true pick up game on July 4th. I can get about 10 players together, albeit, old farts like myself, and play a fun game down at Meade or Kiwanis field. We can let Cal umpire just like he normally does on these blogs. Bloggers verses the real journalists. (I will have some catchy cat calls ready for you John.)

It will wear me out, and I'll be sore for days afterwards, but its worth every sore muscle I suffer through.

What say yea, Cal? You're not chicken, are ya?

Great memories.

When I was about 14 I played "Colt League" (which followed Pony League). I have some pretty good memories of those games.

Remember the 1970 All Star game when Pete Rose crashed into Indians catcher Ray Fosse at home plate? This was soon after that. I was on second base. The batter lines one into right, and I take off. I round third and see the throw coming in just ahead of me. The catcher fields the ball just in time to be waiting with it. I lower my head (imagining that I am Pete Rose) and crash into him.

Next thing I know, I am lying flat on my back, looking up at the catcher grinning down at me. He was none other than Barry Krauss, who went on to be a star linebacker for Alabama and then played in the NFL for years.

When Colt League was over, they offered us "Summer League." For whatever reason, they allowed us to play in the major league spring training park once in a while. Wow! The park was 350 down the lines, 375 in the alleys, and 410 straightaway center. A tall, lanky 15-year-old kid on the other team got hold of a pitch once and bounced it in the air off of the centerfield wall--410 feet away. He got an in-the-park home run out of it, as no one was playing deep enough.

Speaking of running across a road to retrieve a baseball.... Next to the spring training park was the "B field." Sometimes the major league players would practice out there and we would hang out and watch. There was no fence at all around the field. The year Denny McLain returned to the majors he was signed with the Senators. He was in left field shagging flies as someone was hitting fungo shots out. One got past him and rolled across the road. He chased it down and, as he was returning with the ball, he stepped in front of a car with his hand held up for the car to stop. He walked to the driver's window, introduced himself, borrowed a pen, signed the ball and handed it to the driver with a handshake!

My best memories, though, are of sandlot ball. One year, a bunch of us decided to build our own baseball field out in a huge field that bordered a wilderness area. We borrwed several lawn mowers from our dads and cut the grass short for the infield and outfield. A homerun made it to the tall grass in the air. We even built our own backstop our of junk we found, and hauled in red dirt for a pitcher's mound, with an embedded bit of concrete for the "rubber." It was a blast.

When there weren't enough guys to field a team you improvised: pitcher's hand (no first baseman), closed fields (left only, usually), ghost runners.

Sandlot ball was by far the best. Organized ball was fun, but it meant that while I played every inning of every game, my brother often sat on the bench for most of every game he played. He was just not that particularly good, and it troubled me to see him just sitting there, waiting to play.

Whether it was baseball, or basketball, or football, nothing was better than just spontaneously finding yourself standing in the middle of the "lot" looking for someone to play ball with. Then, ever so slowly the regulars would show up, including a few girls, -just to fill the ranks, and the game was on. Everybody played, and there was no bench to sit on, so everyone played.

I went back home to see the old homestead, when my last grandparent passed at the ripe old age of 99 this past December, and the sandlot is now manicured, with trees and shrubs. ARGH, where do the kids play at now? In southwest Virginia, there are so many mountains and hills, that finding a flat area to play was unusual. Fortunately, we had the perfect spot, but alas, its no longer available for the kids to play. If, in fact, they could be dragged away from the X-box or PlayStation.

Kids have no idea of what they were missing. I recall being 12 years old and visiting my aunt and uncle in the country. A very small town called Mendota, with one stop sign. My family owned one of the two general stores, and I was allowed to run it for them. I only charged them however many honey buns I could eat, and chocolate milks I could drink. (Always felt guilty for perhaps not earning my keep, considering how much I ate and drank.)

The front porch had a bench, where the proverbial old men in overhauls would come to sit and spit. I'd listen to them talk and wait for the next customer to come in to buy their milk and bread. I couldn't wait for their purchase, so I could type it up on the adding machine, and then add it to the notebook under the counter, where their tabs were added up for payment at a later time.

They lived on the side of the mountain, and on Sunday mornings, the Baptist Church and Methodist church down below would take turns either ringing their bells, or chiming their chimes. I'd sit out and look down over the valley and see the river running down through the community and I knew that heaven had nothing on this place.

One day, I met a group of boys on bikes. My banana seat schwinn was raring to go, and they wanted to ride to Hilton, home of June Carter, of the Johnny Cash clan, a distance relative of mine, so, I said sure. I told my aunt, she said have a good time, and a group of 20 boys took off on a ride that I googled last year and learned was almost 25 miles long. We started in the morning, and got home right at dusk. We didn't bring water or food with us. Just one dollar that would pay for several Mountain Dews and Moon Pies at the several small stores we would pass.

I'm actually thinking of sending my son back there this summer to let him experience the joy of how it was to live without more than 2 or 3 television channels. With only AM radio, if you could even get a station other than gospel. And when life was much slower, but seemingly more meaningful. Of course that could just be nostalgia talking, because it wasn't an easy life then, although, as a kid, I was somewhat immune from the reality of having to earn a living.

My old friends tell me I'm too nostalgic, and they may be right, but I just can't help but want to remember all of the really wonderful times that I've been blessed with and all of my many friends and adventures that had OUTDOORS.

I can't imagine what it would be like to be near the Ocean, like you two Florida boys. I'm not much of a fan of the water, unless its fresh water, running over the rocky shoal, while I'm standing barefoot and knee deep in it, with a cane pole and a can of worms on the bank, that I had personally dug up myself.

Life is supposed to be this good. If it isn't, then something is wrong, seriously wrong.

My 21 year old daughter is still working on her college degree at West Georgia and was talking to me the other day, while I was trying to finalize my damn taxes. ARGH. She then said something that caught my ear, she said, "I don't want to grow up." I laughed, considering I was on my own at the ripe old age of 18, married at 20, and with my first child at 24.

"Yeah", I replied, "I can relate, I don't want to grow up either, and when I do, I'm really going to be pissed."

My body might be feeling and looking like its 47, but I'm still a dang teenager, camped out in my front yard, looking up into the stars thinking about how, where, and who I am in this wonderful world we live.

Line from Stand By Me:

"I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"

Muddle you said you used to live near Cocoa, you might appreciate this.

When we lived down in Florida, my son played on a competition travel team. In Florida, Babe Ruth competition league was essentially 10 months per year. My son wanted more than anything else to hit a home run out of the park (he had a few inside-the-park dingers).

He regularly crushed the ball but never seemed to go beyond the warning track. Then one day we were playing an away game in New Smyrna Beach and he walloped it. Estimates were around 400 feet to dead center. My son grinned and at long last broke into a home run trot.....at which time a gale force wind from the ocean blew in and I swear that ball stopped and curved down and back into the park, landing at the edge of the warning track...the league's longest single in history!

No.

If this does not qualify under current definitions, then the definitions should be changed. Sounds like a very alert ballplayer.

I hope he got a sufficient number of high fives.