Leaving the cheap seats and the ballet of the double play

Baseball is a game of inches.
What game isn’t?
It’s also a game of years. It takes years for most to become proficient at this game. As kids, we spent years playing baseball.
Most of our summer days were spent on the ballfield, choosing sides, then imitating our Major League idols for nine innings. We’d break for lunch, run home (after running around the bases all morning), then come back again for our afternoon game, with different teams, since we’d choose-up again all over starting from scratch.
Some nights we would scatter to our different organized teams and play a seven-inning game under the lights. This time, in uniform.
That was our job. We were kids; we played baseball all day, and sometime at night. We had no trouble sleeping. And we needed our sleep. After all, we had to be up the next morning and down the ballfield to do it all over again.
That job was never tedious, and it never got old.
When we weren’t playing ball, we would sometime scrape together the cost of a trolley ride and a general admission ticket and safari to Connie Mack Stadium if the Phils were at home.
In those days, the stadium was never packed, so we could pay for the cheap seats, then at about the fourth inning, we’d boldly make our way to the choice seats behind home plate. They were mostly empty, so the ushers didn’t mind. Things were different in those days.
We wanted the Phillies to win, of course, but the important thing was, we were watching a Major League baseball game. There on the field right in front of us were Richie Ashburn, Robin Roberts, Willie Jones, Granny Hammner and other hometowners in their red pinstripes, playing against superhuman beings, like Willie Mays, Stan Musial, Duke Snider.
We knew we were watching supermen. We also knew we would try to emulate them tomorrow on the field behind our street.
The indoctrination to this game has stayed with me, as it does with many of us who grew up playing baseball. We’re those older guys you see watching a high school or college game, even though we don’t know a single player. If we’re driving by a game (and have some time), we’re likely to pull over and watch for an inning or two.
We don’t especially care who wins; we just want to see the game played, because it’s a pretty thing when played correctly by talented teams.
A well-executed double-play is like a three-second ballet choreographed around second base. The majesty of a homerun, with the ball seemingly hanging in space while its trajectory paradoxically carriers it over the craning neck of the outfielder, is the game’s highlight, even though it lasts but seconds.
I don’t like explaining why I like this game better than others. But I always make the effort whenever anyone asks.
It’s too slow, I’m often told by those who criticize the game. There’s too much standing around waiting for the intermittent action.
I guess they never watched 11 men gather in a football huddle for 30 seconds, then stand frozen until the ball is snapped to the quarterback, at which time they all run frenetically into one another for about seven seconds, until a whistle blows the play dead, leading up to another 30 second huddle…
The average pro football game has about 14 minutes of action during its three-hour duration. It takes speed, cunning, power, and endurance to be successful on the gridiron, whereas on the baseball diamond it takes…well, speed, cunning, power, and endurance. It’s just packaged differently and implemented more subtly.
And unlike football or basketball, baseball is not a “glandular” sport. You need not be six-foot-eight or 300 pounds to reach the pinnacle.
Hall of Famers Henry Aaron, Mickey Mantle, and Willie Mays were all under six feet tall. Reigning National League Most Valuable Player Jimmy Rollins stands only five-eight and weighs in at about 160. Makes me wonder if I really could have made the Majors if I would have just practiced a little harder…a little more…a little more often.
I always said that the only thing that prevented me from making it to the Major Leagues was my deficiency in a few critical areas: I just couldn’t run, hit, throw, or catch.
Other than that; I’da been there.
So, like many other frustrated ballplayers who have seen their dreams of stardom crushed by reality (I realized at about age 14 that I was going to get to the Majors via ticket to the grandstands only), I spent my adult playing days in bar-sponsored softball leagues.
I wasn’t too bad. Been retired for a number of years now, but after getting back on the practice field in anticipation of the Herald’s upcoming match against Exit Zero, a neighboring newspaper, I wonder why I’ve stayed away so long.
This game is fun. Still complicated, but enjoyable. A noble endeavor.
When the Herald takes the field July 17 at Carl Mitnick School field at 7 p.m., I intend to return—at least emotionally—to my former playing days. The softball days when I was in my 30s; not the hardball days when I was 12.
That would mean that I could slink down to the expensive seats behind home plate after the fourth inning.
But…I don’t think Connie Mack Stadium is there any more.