Baseball’s Been Very Very Good To Me.
The title of this comes from a skit I saw what seems like a hundred years ago on Saturday
I love the SEC and any sport attached to it. There is just something about the spirit of SEC athletics. It is a whole different feel.
I root for the Gamecocks not matter who they play. I went to Carolina and I was a guard in the Carolina football locker room during the year of Black Magic. Wow, what a year.
Good guys wear black. The whole black magic idea came about when the coaches started wearing black shirts. They needed some type of gimmick to get everyone motivated after the dismal year they had before under Coach Bell.
I remember at the start of the Clemson game that year when the team practiced in their
When Cocky changed his uniform from garnet to black, I thought the stadium would fall down from all the ruckus raised by the Carolina fans.
I root for Clemson whenever they play anyone that is not Carolina and I root for Georgia whenever they play anyone that is not Carolina or Clemson.
Back to baseball, I had forgotten all my past with baseball and had come to feel, as my friend David Bundy pointed out, that it was about as entertaining as watching paint dry. Watching the CWS has reminded me of my baseball past.
My father had always wanted me to be an athlete. He played baseball and football in high school and he went to college on a football scholarship. I remember when I was about four years old he bought me a ball, bat, and glove and he started pitching balls to me. He threw very hard and it hurt every time I caught the ball.
My father thought I should go out for baseball and football, too. I wasn’t asked if I wanted to sign up; they just signed me up. So, I was drafted onto a team called the Bice Standard Yankees. Later that year, Bice Standard became Bice Gulf when they switched what type of gas they sold down to the fillin’ station.
The deal with the team was that everyone got to play at least one whole inning in each game. I was put in right field. I think the thinking was that in little league the likelihood that anyone would hit to right field was incredibly remote.
I was not good enough to play infield so I was put in the outfield. On one of the rare occasions they moved me to left field, I was standing out there when a fly ball was hit to, you guessed it, left field.
The one thing I learned is that I cannot see a ball that is coming down towards me from above. I was hit squarely on the forehead and was knocked out. I woke up with coaches all around.
I remember that my father bought me a pitch back. This is sort of a trampoline/net that you threw the ball at and it pitched it back. I practiced with it a good bit.
Another great thing I remember about baseball is watching the Atlanta Braves play. My father took me to a few of the games and my Uncle Carl took me to one of them.
It was great. At that time, the Braves played at Fulton County Stadium which was near my father’s and Uncle’s office. At the stadium, they sold great hot dogs.
I remember the “Official Hot Dog” of the Atlanta Braves was Oscar Mayer. The official mustard was Gulden’s Spicy Brown Mustard. And these things were expensive, too. It would cost 10¢ to buy a hot dog at the stadium. Boy that was a long time ago.
When we moved to Spartanburg I was on the Mr. Zip team. Mr. Zip was a chain of convenience stores in the Spartanburg County area. I had a good time on the team. But, I was never very good.
In our neighborhood in Spartanburg, we would get together and play what we called baseball. We would have a pitcher, a catcher, and whatever other players we could get together.
The catcher would act as the home plate umpire and somehow every pitch was a strike. You got as many pitches as it took to hit the ball. You could swing till you hit or had to go home, whichever came first.
I never tried out for the team in middle school or high school. I never really thought about it. I do remember watching the Brave’s games with my father.
I also remember watching the games on TBS while on call at the fire stations in Spartanburg County when I was in college at the University of South Carolina in Spartanburg.
I remember we had to take PE in the ninth grade of high school. I was just getting over having been in a diabetic coma during the summer and was not very good.
I do remember that I could hit just about every ball that got near the plate. The problem was I could not hit it very far. When I did hit it, the ball went directly back to Couch Clark, who was pitching.
Now, I am enjoying watching the game again. I look forward to watching the final games this next week. See you there.
Read My Child-Bride Suzanne's Blog
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That is a cute picture. I am glad that you had fun, even though the ball made you go "boom". Love you.
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