Hind Catcher

We would be remiss if we didn’t relate our experience as a baseball catcher one day in our teens. Man on second, we call for a fastball with two out in the bottom of the seventh (the inning of decision for kids) and ahead by a run. The young stud at the plate laces the pitch into left center. We throw off our mask and stand astride the plate, all 130 pounds of ourselves. The left fielder picks it up cleanly and fires to us.

The throw is high, we have to jump and catch and apply the tag in one motion. The man on second, a young Pete Rose, barrels in as we tag him on his back as he sends us flying. It is our one moment of glory. Few remain, we suspect.

We never heard a greater compliment than that delivered that day by a young lady with bad teeth, common in those days. “What a brave hind catcher.” We still see her and love her wherever she is. Are there still hill folk who call the catcher a “hind catcher?”

This is why we love this sporting life. The moment of a girl (we can’t divulge her name) telling you at 16 that you are brave has an exhilarating effect. It has lasted a lifetime.

But fear tries to poke its nose beneath the tent. So we are always in awe of the man in the arena, the guy or gal who leaves the tent without a care for battle.


How about the poor son of a gun from Pittsburgh who fouled the Butler fellow on a free throw rebound with a second on the clock and the score tied? He was reacting as all of us would do when we feel an athletic feat is called for.

Hold your head high, young man. We’ve all been there. We dropped a pop foul attempting a basket catch as a hind catcher, allowing the young batsman to get another pitch and drive in the winning run

”It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night is another thing." (The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway).

Pick and Choose

The higher power has no power. He is strangely absent from the course of human events. Holy Cow! Perhaps He created us and left us to our own devices, including nuclear power plants, the Declaration of Independence and the National Football League lockout. Not to mention the rise of multi-cellular organisms with the capacity to organize games that defy logic. Why were Colorado, St. Mary’s and Virginia Tech left out of The Dance?

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we ask you what hath God wrought?

But this is all palaver. Baseball is a mere two weeks-plus away, and shorts, golf shirts and no socks are on the horizon.

Our picks are chalk, as they say. Philadelphia from the senior circuit and the New England Patriots, oops, we mean the Beantown bloody ankles from the designated hitter heretic league will appear in the fall classic. Expect Phillies winning it all but winning under 97 games in the regular season. Our beloved Redbirds are doomed without 20-game winner Adam Wainwright. It has been our experience that the team with the better players wins. Jeff Capel, the fired coach of the Crimson and Cream, had Blake Griffin and rode this horse to the elite eight just two years ago.

But meanwhile we have young men in baggy shorts putting us into full March Madness Mode. We are going full unchalk in this one. We see San Diego State defeating Florida in the final. This is a lock, so get in while you can. For entertainment purposes only.

Sports, as they are meant to do, distract us from life as it is. Few of us will hit the three-pointer at the buzzer, or the home run in the bottom of the ninth. Fewer of us will encounter the decision to save the elderly and endanger our own lives. But some do. In this sporting life, we face dilemmas greater than point spreads and over-unders.

By the way, take Gonzaga over St. John’s, hold onto Ford Motor Co., love thy neighbor and don’t practice putting.

You Can Smell It

Unconscious Jon Diebler undid us the other day. The young Buckeye poured in threes as easily as teddy bears nestle with toddlers snoring in their beds. It was sleepwalking against the Wisconsin Badgers. Who needed stalwart Jared Sullinger inside when beyond the arc was the comfort zone for the Ohio State University?

As earthly mammals, we all seek comfort even as we strive to overcome our fellow mammal, each of whom is born live with fur and warm blood and the drive to overcome his or her brethren. Winning requires comfort, a condition that requires the ability of holding two opposing ideas in the mind and still function, a daunting task that makes this sporting life fraught with tension.

Want to bet on West Texas Intermediate crude going to $150 a barrel? There is another mammal who would take your action and relish in your loss. How about Ford Motor Co. breaching $20 a share this year? Plenty of short-sellers who’ll go the other way.

We attended our first boxing match the other night, watching young men in blue and gold (for entertainment purposes only) and managed to escape without blood on our jacket, which we considered a victory. A delicious slice of lemon meringue pie and a cup of coffee topped the evening off, and we mused that competition makes liars of us all. Martha Stewart wasn’t convicted of insider trading, but lying to the U.S. government about it.

We had a class long ago in Hawthorne and Melville, during which, in a discussion of the latter’s “The Confidence Man,” a young man of tender sensibilities actually broke down crying, exclaiming that no one can be trusted and the professor had to go to his side and pat him on the back. We chuckled at the time, but now we wonder if he wasn’t right to despair. Comfort zones are just that -- zones. When the world is turned upside down and we see it for what it is, all the bromides, sweater vests of coaches and protestations of integrity disintegrate.

Now, we are no saint, but Jim Tressel, the pigskin coach of the Ohio State University, keeps trying to be one. C’mon man. There is no comfort zone for a phony unless he wins.

“There ain't nothin' more powerful than the odor of mendacity...You can smell it.” (Tennessee Williams, Cat on Hot tin Roof).

Meanwhile, expect the Crimson and Cream of Cleveland County Indian Territory to cover against the Bears of Waco and the Johnnies of Queens County to cover against the Scarlet Knights of New Brunswick.