Sporting memories: I knock myself out in a baseball game

For anyone that follows the things I write you may already be aware of the fact that I excelled at sports as a youth in almost all fields. The one exception of a sport that I tried but was NOT good at, was baseball. I tried to be good at it and participated in it frequently but there was just something about the game that I couldn't figure out. For one thing I had a weak arm when throwing a baseball and this is despite the fact that in other games involving the throwing of something such as frisbee and American football, I could launch the hell out of the projectile. But in baseball I couldn't even get the ball from 3rd base to 1st without it hitting the ground. I was young before I finally gave up on the sport at around 12 years old but it is embarrassing to be a boy and not be capable of making that throw. People knew better than to try to poke genuine insults my way though because I was really good at virtually every other sport and would punish them for their comments should they be dumb enough to make them.

I am not a spoil sport though, so i continued to play despite not being very good at it.

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I can't be certain because it was a long time ago but I believe the year that a couple of nasty things happened to me was the last year I played organized baseball with youth-league teams.

The first issue I had was something really silly that I couldn't seem to break the habit of. I wasn't the best batter, but I wasn't terrible either. When I would get a hit I had this terrible habit that I wasn't even aware was a rule where I would throw the bat instinctually after getting a hit. I didn't even realize I was doing it and certainly wasn't doing it in some sort of attempt to get an advantage by putting the catcher in danger.

I would be running on my way to 1st base only to have the umpire call the play off and make me be out automatically because I threw the bat, again and again and again. Eventually my coach worked on this with me and we developed a system where I would actually carry the bat with me most of the way to 1st base and then just lie it down on the line there. I'm not sure if this is legal in the pros but they made an exception for little kids. I don't know what was going on with me, I just got so excited after a hit (I guess) that I would freak out! and throw the hell out of the bat.

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That issue wasn't enough to make me quit though because there is just something about baseball that is more rewarding than other team sports. Sure, you are on a team but that becomes an individual game when you are up to bat. It is also a completely different game every week depending on the skill of the pitcher you are against. Some are a lot better than others and there are right and left handed pitchers as well as all sorts of other styles you might end up against.

So I kept on playing because there was still something about this game that really appealed to me even though by far, it was the sport I was least good at. You always know when you are considered one of the worst players when you get put in right field (the area behind 1st base) because this is where the ball is least likely to fly in a game. That was where I played because the coaches were obligated to play everyone on the team.

So let's move on to my career ending injury as a 12 year old kid or so. Batting was the one aspect of the game that I didn't absolutely suck at, so I looked forward to it and I think my coach didn't hate that I was in the lineup for that because I would get hits on a regular basis. Of course we had the issue with me throwing the bat but we had mostly rectified that situation at this point. You wear a helmet when you are batting to protect you from getting hit by a pitch and this is little league anyway, the pitchers don't have hand-cannons at this stage and they are not accurate enough to intentionally give you some "chin music" if you are crowding the plate like they do in the pros.

The pitcher threw a regular fast-ball which is what most of the pitches were back in that time and I swung and I guess made contact just right because that ball "tinked" off the bat and hit me square on the temple on the right side of my head. you have a helmet on but this was the 80's and we were not overly concerned about over-the-top safety.

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That's obviously not me. That's Sammy Sosa who is one of the greatest hitters in baseball of all time. This was a famous pitch that hit him so hard in the head that it destroyed the safety helmet and it was this pitch and others like it that lead to stricter regulations on what the helmets had to be made of. Of course he is dealing with a guy that can throw the ball 100 miles per hour, I was not.

In my situation it was just horrible luck that the ball would crash off the bat and head directly towards one of the only parts of your face that isn't protected by the helmet and looking back, I am quite happy that it hit me where it did and not my eye or teeth. That ball would have certainly knocked some teeth out and if it were to catch you just right in the eye, you could end up losing the eye. That would have been absolutely awful.

Instead, I just collapsed to the ground and the next thing I know everyone including my parents are around me on the field trying to help me out. I don't know how long I was unconscious but it was for a couple of minutes. I am sure that a lot of people were very concerned including my parents but there wasn't even any blood. I did end up having quite the bruise there but it was a point of pride and I was a bit of a hero on the school grounds for the next week or so.

That ended up being the last game that I would play with an organized group until over a decade later when I joined an adult softball team for my work which was extremely laid back and not at all competitive.

It's just funny to me that my biggest moment of glory in all the years that I played baseball was the one instance where I injured myself. I never excelled at that sport and I think this was around the 3rd or 4th year I was attempting to play it. Since I was already doing very well at basketball, American football, swimming, and football of the soccer variety it was ok for me to bail on one of the sports. Once I was out of that I had a lot more free-time in my summers anyway although I do have to say that I was a bit jealous of my friends who had an organized team to participate in during the summers. Baseball does have the best uniforms of any sport played in America as well if you ask me.