THINGS WERE MUCH SIMPLER BACK THEN

Inspired by a friend of mine's blog entry.

I remember back to a day when things were easier. No work, all play. My job when I was younger was to play baseball and make good grades in school. At least I did one of them well. I think one of the greatest feelings I ever felt in life was what it felt like to make contact with a ball and know it is going over the fence. It was blissful...pure...clean. It was almost like greatness was achieved by something so simple. Knowing that your competition was outdone to the fullest extent of the law and knowing that all eyes are on you at that very moment was the best. I developed a style of what was called pimping a home run. I believe that I was good at it too. People used to come to the park and ask me if I was going to homer that game. I was a god to some. My teammates used to love playing with me because I made the game fun. I took all of the pressure and tension off of them and put it on myself. I took care of my team and my teammates. When I would step into the batters box there was a swagger about me, a presence. I was an intemmidating factor. I have called my shot many times and every time I called my shot I did what I said I was going to do. Can anyone else say that? Anyone who has done it about 5 times?

I remember a game that I played in Lake Dallas the year after I graduated high school. It was a summer league game with the old high school team. We were playing Coppell and I knew the kid who was pitching. We used to play on the same team a few years back. We were kicking the shit out of them and I was on deck. The guys in the dugout told me to call my shot. I thought about it and said no, that it would be bad for the game. They kept on and called me scared and said I wouldn't do it. I walked up to the plate and pointed with my left hand to the left field fence. The first two pitches were balls and before the third pitch I pointed again. He threw me a high inside curve ball that I hit over the houses in left field. The ball probably flew over 450 feet in the air. I stood at home plate and watched the ball leave the field and the yard behind the fence and go over the house. I was in awe of what I had just done. Not only did I call my shot and hit a home run, but I did it in a fashion that no one could doubt. We never found the ball. I think I sent it into orbit.

The foul ball home run...is it a jinx or is it a blessing. Many baseball players see the foul ball home run as a sign that you are going to strike out. This does happen quite often. I think the mental aspect of the game comes into play when this happens. A player may think that he has to muscle up to reproduce the same effect. This normally disrupts the natural flow of a swing causing the player to not make contact. It is quite frustrating.

I played with a kid named Drew Norris when I was younger. He wasn't that good at all, but his dad was the coach and he was filthy rich. So he got to play every game. Fair enough. I played short stop and Drew played second base. He was a small kid. We were about 16 at the time and he drove a bad ass Mustang GT that was black with Cobra wheels on it. He had 2 tens in the trunk that sounded quite nice. Anyway, we had a lot of fun playing together. I never had to pay to be on his dad's team after the first year. Drew and I were actually a good middle combo. We turned many double plays. I helped raise his game because we were laughing and cutting up and he wasn't thinking about booting a ball or making a bad throw. We would fancy up our double plays and we would occasionally mess one up because of showbaoting, but we laughed it off. We didn't care. We were there for fun. Recreation. We had fun. I miss those days.