Baseball’s Grapefruit League is upon us. The Regular Season will follow, beginning an ordeal that slogs on for 13 months each year. Baseball starts in the spring when it’s snowing and ends the next winter when it’s snowing. Although long and arduous, baseball is a game of subtleties only a true fan appreciates. Even a routine popup to the shortstop sets in motion eight teammates whose job is not just to stand there. As the shortstop squeezes the ball into his mitt, the others, all who have grown weary of backing each other up … grab their crotches.
Not each others’ crotches, but their own personal ones. They do this because their protective cups need constant repositioning. Less widely known is that if the TV camera pans to any player, and he fails to adjust his cup, he will immediately be shipped to the Minor Leagues.
Protective cups have been part of the Grand Old Game ever since 1882 when Abner Doubleday strapped a peach basket over the loins of Gabby O’Neal, a hairy-knuckled Irish-born catcher, who, after repeated hits, began to project a Tiny Tim falsetto. But peach baskets proved bad for baseball and good for basketball. So baseball players improvised. They began using ill-fitting oxygen masks as protective cups, but this caused a lot of chaffing. All the itching and scratching ultimately led to today’s tradition of baseball players constantly adjusting themselves, whether they need to or not.
You may have also noticed that baseball players spit a lot. Not like football players who must contend with facemask blow-back. Or basketball players who can’t expectorate on a hardwood floor. For years baseball players chewed tobacco. Finally they asked themselves:
“Hey, why are our teeth falling out?”
So they switched to sunflower seeds. This left the bad teeth to hockey players and people from England.
When I first played men’s ball, most of my team chewed tobacco. One of our pitchers, a guy named Stan, always had a golf ball-sized chaw wedged between his cheek and gum. With one eye permanently squinted, he’d draw a bead on a fly crawling along the dugout floor, some twenty feet away. He’d launch a spit missile and hit the fly straight on. As it writhed on its back, spinning around in a puddle of tobacco juice, Stan would strike again, then again. No one walked barefoot in our dugout.
Spitting is important, but not as important as lying. No one can take a wrecking ball to the truth better than an old ballplayer. I remember the last team I played on. I got to tell elaborate lies to gullible twenty year-olds about how good I used to be. Proving lying is an art form, I’d say something like:
“Yep, just out of high school, I used to throw in the mid 90’s and was almost drafted.”
I didn’t mention that was in kilometers per hour and Uncle Sam gave me a really low draft number.
If you come into my office and I look forlorn that I might miss playing ball, you’d be right. So forgive me if you catch me when I scratch. Or spit. Or lie.
Old ballplayers just can’t help it.