Glove Story
By ice rivers
- 514 reads
One day Coach Dingfeldt approached Arthur and said “Glove, if you lend Bobby your mitt for the rest of the season, I’ll give you a new position”
Glove, a team player, was always eager to please. Since it was clear that his Father had abandoned the team and wouldn’t know or care one way or the other, Glove decided to lend his mitt to Bobby. Coach Dingfeldt, true to his word, gave Junior his new position…..statstop.
As statstop, Junior had the important job of keeping score during the games and then turning his scorecard into a stat sheet. Dingfeldt turned the job of teaching Junior how to keep score over to his assistant coach, an alcoholic named Nelson Starks.
Starks taught Junior the numbers for the positions; 1 for pitcher, 2 for catcher, 3 for fist base, 4 for second base, 5 for third base ,6 for shortstop, 7 for left field, 8 for center field and 9 for right field. Any time anyone in those positions touched the ball, it was to be recorded in the “official” scorebook by the team statstop. A ground out to the second baseman was recorded as a 4-3. A flyball caught by the center fielder was recorded as an 8. Et feakin cetera.
Arthur caught on quickly. With Bobby at shortstop hoovering anything hit near him and with Arthur at statstop recording every play, the Pirates began a winning streak.
After one particularly unbelievable play, Bobby came back to the bench and when the rest of the team congratulated him, Bobby said, “it wasn’t me…it was Art.”
For a split second Junior felt like he was getting some credit for the success of the team. Then he realized that Bobby was giving credit not to Junior but to Junior’s glove which was now known as Art.
The boy was now named after the glove and the glove was named after the boy. In the mind of the boy, the glove was getting the better deal although even Art was nothing to write about.
With Bobby installed at shortstop with Art installed on his hand and with Glove installed on the bench with a scorecard and pencil in his hand, the Pirates began to win and win big.
Kippy Fiore, Wheaties Mueller, Sandy Granada, Tony Giambrone and Bow Aqualina, despite their mediocre mitts could all field, run and hit. Nick Sellmer could pitch. The only weakness had been shortstop. Bobby and Art took care of that problem.
The Pirates reached the championship game. Arthur Junior never breathed a word about the teams success to his father for fear that his father would show up and demand that Arthur a) get his ass on the field and b) get his glove back from the zitface at shortstop. The night before the game, Arthur could imagine the whole house of cards collapsing. He, in fact, did visualize the entire humiliation and when he did so he fell asleep. He slept the sleep of the innocent who somehow suspect that they may not be innocent after all for reasons undetermined.
Arthur's father didn't show up for the game. The Pirates were playing the Braves. For years, the Braves had been the best team in the League. The guys on the Braves had real good gloves and their gloves were in proportion to their skills. Still, Art, on the hand of Bobby was the best mitt on the field and both teams knew it. Art had become the talk of the league.
The pitcher for the Braves was a guy named Chico. Word had it that Chico was at least fifteen years old. Chico threw hard and seemed to enjoy hitting kids. Everybody was afraid of Chico. Nobody wanted to dig in at the plate.
The game turned into a pitcher's battle between Chico and Nick. After a short delay because of threatening weather, the game moved quickly until the sixth inning, with both teams scoreless.
In the last at bat of the season, the Pirates dug in.
Kippy singled. Wheaties doubled. Kippy scored. The Pirates took the lead. Sandy hit a fly ball over the barbed wire into the power plant for a two run homer. Mr Jordan, the coach of the Braves arguesd that the ball was foul. The argument got ugly. Several parents got involved. The umpire held his ground. The parents headed back to their seats. Tony Giambrone struck out for out number two after Chico threw a couple of pitches behind him.
Bow, the next batter did exactly the same thing that Sandy did, smashing the ball to nearly the exact same spot over the exact same stretch of barbed wire for yet another debatable homerun.
Out came Jordan. Ten more minutes of screaming, finger pointing, , spitting, swearing name-calling and threatening ensued before peace was restored. The home run counted. The score was 4-0 Pirates.
Bobby struck out to end the inning.
The Pirates needed three more outs. It was nearly nine oclock when the Braves came up to the plate.
Darkness Falling
An inning is not supposed to start after 8:30. Even with the rain delay, the sixth inning of the Pirates versus Braves championship game began at 8:18.
Glove kept meticulous track of such arcana. In this regard Glove was particularly superfluous. Ya don't need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows and you don't need a statstop to tell ya that it's dark.
By the time the top of the sixth ended; after the offensive outburst, after the two disputed home runs, after the the near riots that ensued after each home run, after the time spent after the riots clearing the field of debris and derelicts, the time was 8:56.
Nick Sellmer took the mound and began his warm-up pitches. Glove consulted his trusty scorebook. Glove noticed that Nick had pitched two innings in the must-win game prior to the championship game. The league had a rule that no pitcher could pitch more than seven inning within the space of a week.When Nick threw his first pitch of the sixth inning, his performance would be against league legislation. Glove figured that the penalty for breaking this rule would be forfeiture.
Coach Dingfeldt was not only aware of the rule but also aware of the fact that if he took Nick out of the game now, all the parents would be on his case for the rest of his life, not so much for taking Nick out tonight but for bringing him in a couple of nights before.
Coach Dingfeldt decided that he would leave Nick in the game and if the fit hit the shan, he could always blame the little twerp on the end of the bench, the "statstop" named Glove.
And if Glove approached him, the coach, he would pretend he was doing something else. Dingfeldt would determine Glove's honesty by the urgencey of Glove's interruption.
Glove was polite. Glove hated to interrupt anyone, particularly figures of authority.
Glove didn't know if Coach Dingfeldt knew what Glove knew. The inning which defined the entire season might depend upon Glove getting through to Coach. The Pirates did have an alternative, a chinless boy named Steve Kaul who everybody called Froggy. Froggy threw the ball in a combinatin submarine/sidearm style that lost all of it idiosyncracy by the time it reached the plate. This imminently hittable pitch was called "the Swamp Ball".
As the othe Pirates took the field for the last time, Glove walked from the far end of the bench to where Coach Dingfeldt was speaking to Coach Starks.
Glove cleared his throat "Ummm, Coach?"
Nick had already thrown the first of his allotted six warm-up pitches by the time Glove got to Dingfeldt.
"Coach, ummm, I'm afraid that if Nick throws one more pitch to one more batter......."
POP. Warm-up pitch number two.
Dingfeldt interrupted Glove.
"Are you afraid, Glove ?" Dingfeldt asked as he turned his back to Glove and for the last time rearranged the bats in the bat rack. Looking at Dingfeldt's back, Glove realized what a gigantic man his Coach was.
"Yes, Coach. I am"
Dingfeldt turned and faced the boy.
Looking at his front, Glove realized what a determined man his coach was.
SMACK. Warm up pitch number three exploded into the catcher's mitt on the darkened field. At this stage of the night, the pitches were more audible than visible.
"Do you know what courage is Glove?"
"Courage is facing your fears, Coach"
"Not bad, Glove"
PMACK. Warm up pitch number four.
"Courage, son, is knowing what not to fear. Do you understand me? "
"But, Coach......"
SMAP. Warm up pitch number five.
"Listen, Arthur. Go back to the end of the bench. Take out your pencil. Keep a record of the action on the field. You be the statstop. I'll be the coach. Aside from my advice about courage, forget the rest of this conversation. Know what to fear and what not to fear.Be courageous. Is that clear, Glove. "
"Yes, Coach"
For a split second Glove realized what he should do. He should run out to the mound and explain the situation to Nick. Nick could do whatever he wanted to do and at the same time bear witness that Glove had done the right thing.
In the next split second, he visualized how absurd that scene would be, how inappropriate to the trappings of the game. The benchwarmer taking over as manager and advising the star pitcher what to do. That wasn't going to fly.
Glove took his place on the bench.
Nick fired his last warm up pitch.
The umpire, a Greek guy named Dee who ran a delicatessen in which there was a horrifying barrel of gherkins, yelled "batter up".
By the time Nick threw the first pitch in the last inning, Glove realized there was only one way out. The Pirates, his team, had to lose. Glove started pulling for the Braves even as he felt his heart breaking with the abandonment of loyalty.
Meanhwile in the dark on the bench between the top and the bottom of the sixth inning, Mr Jordan had a few ideas of his own.
He hoped that Dingfeldt didn't know that if Nick pitched one more pitch that action would be in violation of league rules and the outcome of the game would be, after the official protest was filed, either a forfeiture or a disqualification.
Either way, the Pirates would be walking the plank. Jordan's only fear was that someone would clue in the cluless Coach. When Jordan looked over at the bench and noticed some little kid with a too big uniform trying to get the attention of Otto, he thought that Froggy might be coming into the game and the protest win/win plan would be erased.
Whatever the kid said to the coach and whatever the coach said to the kid before the little jerk walked back to his place on the bench, Nick had completed his warm up pitches.
Dee, the Greek umpire, trying to hurry the game along yelled "batter up".
Before the leadoff batter, Stash Malloy, walked to the plate, Mr Jordan took him aside and revealed idea number two.
"Do not take that bat off your shoulder, Stash. Take every pitch. Take, take all the way. Do not swing"
Stash nodded and headed for the plate.
Jordan's plan was this, he wasn't going to protest until after the conclusion of the game. The evening was growing too dark to play ball. The whitest balls in the ball bag were already parked inthe power plant somewhere. Whatever balls that Nick pitched would be scuffed from a season of sandlot. They would add an extra level of difficulty not only to the batters but also to the fielders and the umpire.
Nick threw hard but he didn't have great control.
Dee's delicatessen owed the Jordan Trucking Company (whose motto was "we deliver the goods") a favor or two. The Brave's fans were all up in arms about the two home runs that they thought were foul balls. Dee owed them a couple of calls as well.
If the Braves managed to score five runs in their last at bat, the protest would be moot.
Jordan loved his chances.
Fourteen pitches later, the bases were loaded with Braves and there were no outs. None of the first three batters had swung at a single pitch. The only reason no runs had been scored was the rule that a run could not be scored as the result of a passed ball.
Chico was coming to the plate.
In its essence, baseball is a game of catch between two people. While the game of catch is proceeding, a series of other people try to interrupt that game of catch, one at a time, by swinging a piece of wood at the thrown ball and then running home before the game of catch can be resumed.
In professional baseball, the game of catch must be played perfectly. If the ball gets by the catcher, blame must be found and assigned. If the blame falls on the catcher,if he should have caught the ball but failed to, the transgression is called a passed ball. If the blame is on the pitcher, if his throw was so errant as to be un-catchable, that transgression is known as a wild pitch.
In professional baseball, a penalty exists for passed balls and wild pitches. If, after a third strike, a passed ball occurs; the batter can try to run to first base before the catcher can retrieve the ball and either touch the batter or throw to first base. If humans are on base at the time of the wild pitch or the passed ball, the runners may advance to the next base or bases but they do so at their own risk.
Little League baseball is far from professional so some of these penalties are waived depending upon jurisdiction of the league. The East Side Little League, whose championship game was being decided by the Braves and the Pirates, allowed baserunners to advance after wild pitches or passed balls but forbade any runner on third from scoring a run in such a manner.
The reason this rule was instituted in the first place was the location of the backstop at the main field. The backstop was only fifteen feet from home plate which meant that a pitched ball could get past the catcher, hit the backstop and bounce right back into play. This factor made the backstop too much "in play". Several injuries had occurred when the ball bounced off the backstop so randomly that a collison at the plate involved not only the catcher and the runner but also the pitcher, the umpire and the batter who still carried his stick in his hand.
So the rule was waived.
That's why, in the bottom of the sixth, the bases were loaded with Braves. Nobody was swinging and there was no base eligible for any runner to advance even though wild pitches/passed balls had been occurring on nearly every pitch.
As Chico strode to the plate, the situation was this and had been thus for awhile:the batter couldn't see the pitch to hit it, the umpire couldn't glimpse the pitch to call it and the catcher couldn't track the pitch to catch it.
And it was getting darker by the minute.
Dingfeldt, like most men, had two matters foremost in his mind....victory and justification. The fact that the kid had confronted him about Nick's eligibility to pitch the ninth inning irritated his justification module. The fact that the Braves had the bases loaded with nobody out and the best player in the league coming to the plate, threatened his victory module.
Otto had to come up with something quick. He decided to take a walk out to the mound. On the way to the mound, Dingfeldt realized that only two of the pitches thrown in the inning had been cleanly caught. Both of those pitches were called strikes by Dee, the delicatessen umpire. Hmmmm. Dee couldn't see the pitches either. Dee was assuming that if the catcher caught it, it had to be a strike and if it got by the catcher, the pitch must have been out of the strike zone in the first place which resulted in a call of "ball"
As fast as he was, Nick was not the easiest pitcher to catch. To make matters worse, the catcher, Skip Mancuso was not the first string catcher on the team. The best catcher on the team happened to be the best player on the team who happened to be the best pitcher on the team who happened to be the guy on the mound that Dingfeldt was heading towards.
By the time he got to the mound, Dingfeldt had his mind made up. He was going to make a change. His change was not going to be so much a change of pitchers as it was a change of catchers.
"Skip, go on out to right field and bring Frog in from the swamp. Nick, you're gonna catch the rest of the game. You pitched a helluva game, now I need you to catch one helluva inning."
Frog came in from right field, replaced by Skip. Nick put on the catcher's gear. Otto gave the ball to Frog with the age old advice "Just throw this godamned thing over the plate. Throw it to Nick"
And with the changes made, Dingfeldt headed back to the bench.
And it got darker
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