|
I should have known better. Just two weeks ago I cautioned the youth who used MySpace.com about what they wrote while on that site because once you have written it, you can’t take it back. Then what do I do? I write about what a great and relaxing time I am having this season in my son’s final year of Little League. Sounds harmless enough, right? Well the baseball gods had a little something to say about that.
As I have done in the past, as we all have done, I jinxed myself. How many times have things in your life been going perfectly and as opposed to just thinking about it, you feel compelled to verbalize it? And what happens once you do? You know, everything suddenly turns to crap and falls apart. In my little world it’s a tad worse. Because just like MySpace.com, all of my columns are on the Internet as well as in print. So, like a case of Herpes, they don’t go away. They are there forever to haunt me.
That said, the next day after last week’s column came out we, my wife Stacey and I, went to my son Alex’s game. Along with all the rest of the parents from our team, my daughter Rachel and her boyfriend Andrew were in attendance. Also there was my best friend Tom, Andrew’s father, and his daughter Dominique. It was a full house and we were all feeling confident of a win.
That confidence was based on two things. First is the fact that Alex’s team, the Brewers, are good, and they’re currently in first place. Second, Stacey and I had gone to the game the night before between the Alhambra Orioles and the Temple City Pirates, the next two teams we were to play, the Orioles being first. As we played scouts, we watched as the Orioles played a horrible game. The first six runs that the Pirates scored in the first inning were on errors from the Orioles, and we assumed that we, The Mighty Brewer Machine, would be able to take them on, no problem.
After making our scouting report to our manager, Abe, we all felt comfortable about our chances and the boys took the field with confidence. With my relaxed attitude in place, and the warm and fuzzy feelings in the crowd in evidence, we all settled in for a night of Brewers Baseball. Unfortunately there were powers at work that we couldn’t foresee that would tip the scales in ways that we could never have predicted. Unbeknownst to me, my freshly written words hung above my head like the blade of a guillotine ready to drop.
We were the home team so we took the field first and as the inning progressed everyone in attendance could feel that something was amiss. Our Brewers, who usually field the ball like nobody’s business, couldn’t field the ball to save their lives. This was particularly unfortunate for the starting pitcher, my son Alex, as the spotlight was on him. Even though the problems didn’t stem from the pitching, a pitcher is only as good as the team that is backing him up, my anxiety was building as I watched my son get frustrated with every play. My relaxed attitude was quickly being replaced with churning in my stomach and a feeling of light-headedness.
After we had finally gotten out of the first half of the inning it was our turn to do some damage with our bats. Based on what we had seen at the previous night’s performance by the Orioles, that was an obtainable goal. But the baseball gods had some powerful voodoo working, and the team, who couldn’t field the ball the night before, couldn’t miss it tonight.
Maybe it wasn’t the baseball gods; maybe it was the full moon that loomed above us. Based on what we had seen the night before from the Orioles and what we had seen from our Brewers all season some sort of spell had been cast and the teams had been switched. This left everyone in the stands scratching their heads and growing restless. Of course this led to a tactless statement being made and the subsequent admonishing of that person. We hadn’t seen any heated tempers all season and this wacky roll reversal was taking its toll.
As if these cosmic disturbances weren’t enough of a distraction, we also were saddled with two of the worst umpires, or “blues” as they are called, I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot of them. We will just call them Blind and Blinder due to the fact that they were making calls that were obviously wrong to everybody but them. These two clowns couldn’t call their mothers with a telephone no less call a baseball game. I don’t know where Alhambra American Little League got these guys from but I hope they got a good deal on them and didn’t pay full price. Maybe they got them from the “Slightly Irregular Umpire Store” or perhaps they were students who haven’t quite graduated yet and were getting behind the plate training. In any case, the bottom line is that they sucked as umpires.
The plate umpire was every pitcher and batter’s worst nightmare due to the fact that he never defined his strike zone. Well “zone” is not an accurate description of the area; lets call it a spot instead. It would be one thing if his strike “spot” was the same every time, but it bounced around like a laser pointer in the hands of a three year old. As I always do when I think I’m seeing inconsistencies in calls by a blue I reposition myself directly behind home plate to see exactly what he is seeing. Well either the glasses he was wearing, that were as thick as the magnifying glass used on the Hubble Telescope, needed a new prescription or maybe he had one too many beers before the game. No two called strikes were in the same spot.
This fact was not lost on our game’s hero that night, one of our coaches “Super Dave” Stransky who, after one more asinine call by the plate blue, charged the plate to confront him. You see in addition to his inability to call balls and strikes he had this fetish about players throwing bats. Maybe somewhere in his past he got hit in the head by a bat, thus explaining his apparent vision problems. It obviously impaired his judgment making abilities as well.
On this particular night, when a player on the Orioles tossed his bat, the blue went over and gave a private warning to their first base coach. The next inning when one of our players did the same thing, tossed his bat, the blue didn’t extend our team the same courtesy to our team and called our player out. Just like Popeye says, “That’s all I can stands and I can’t stands no more!” “Super Dave” flew to the plate and said what everyone on our side of the field was feeling. His outburst seemed to inspire our players because immediately after it, they had a small rally. But it was too little too late.
A few days later the full moon had past and our team was returned to us unharmed and immediately got back on the winning track. So everything is right with the world and we are back to having that perfect season that I wrote about last week. I also learned a valuable lesson when things are going great. Don’t say it out loud or write about it because you might jinx……..
Oh my God, what have I done?
|
