The Strategy Of Baseball
A vacant lot between our house and the old Coca-Cola bottling plant in Monticello, Ark., was a magnet, drawing a motley collection of neighborhood kids into summer afternoon pickup games. Though never blessed with baseball aptitude, I still envisioned being a part of a real team--one where players wore uniforms and sat in a dugout. This irrational desire compelled me to submit to the humiliation of Little League tryouts.
There's only one feasible explanation for my making the team: the coach had compassion on me despite my shortcomings. Still, in the occasional situations where we enjoyed a comfortable lead, I was thrust into the lineup to pinch hit and occupy a safe position far in the outfield. But being on the Cubs was enough.
Today I hold my old glove from the Western Auto store and notice that it's of the style where the middle two fingers are inserted into the same opening. Hard-thrown balls so stung my tiny hands that Mother unraveled the glove's lacing to slide a potholder into its palm. That created another problem: balls more easily bounced out.
Though my glove, uniform and #28 Louisville Slugger (made of wood, of course) established me as a real player, they never erased the anxiety of being frozen in my best batter's stance… dreading the spinning orb whistling toward me at the speed of light. By literal strokes of luck, I did manage to connect a time or two--and gallop like crazy toward first base.
My two-fold objective was ten-year-old simple: swing like Babe Ruth at any pitch within bat range and heave back any stray ball that landed near my lonely outfield post. Catching a fly ball was unfathomable.
As an adult I would discover that the brains of coaches churn with ideas, options and battle plans to wring the most from any game scenario. Just last week, I saw a coach pluck a seldom-used strategy from his bag of tricks in a desperate grasp to save the game. His team clung by to a slim one-point lead as the opposing team came to bat at the bottom of the last inning.
Tense moments ticked by. The score was tied with two men yet on base. Then came the trick. The next batter was intentionally walked to load the bases--normally a dangerous situation--to make an out easier to achieve and to thus force another inning for breaking the tie. With all eyes and energies thus shifted to the infield, the next pitch was easily popped right over second base and a runner streaked home.
I wondered why that coach had departed from his otherwise flawless defensive game at such a critical point. Perhaps for the same reason it's so easy to abandon faithfulness to well-performed duties in the boiling caldron of crisis.
Duty is what we do while waiting for deliverance to come.
Copyright 2002 James McAlister
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