One and Done

Our family moved to the Exeter area in mid-October of my sophomore year. With the approach of Spring, I did as I had always done and tried out for the school baseball team. Not having any extraordinary talents to speak of, I knew making the varsity was not possible, though I believed making the JV squad was realistic.

I made the team and as the beginning of the season approached, I was still unsure as to my team “status”. Most of the starting positions were filled by obvious starters, but the outfield still had an opening in left field. My younger sister, Casie, who was an 8th-grader at the adjacent junior high, was also a gym class student for Coach Taylor, whose day job was as a Phys Ed instructor next door. The word on the street was that I may be slated to open the JV season for the EAHS Bluehawks in left field.

It was a cool, gray, rainy day as the season opened that Saturday morning in early April. As had been rumored, when the starting lineup was announced shortly before game time, I had been penciled in at left field and were to bat low in the order, quite possibly ninth, if memory serves me correctly.

It was pretty much downhill from there. Not just for that day, but the rest of the season. And all seasons to follow.

In the top of the 1st, with two outs and runners at 1st and 2nd, an opposing batter lifted a towering fly ball to left, near the foul line and adjacent bleachers. Running initially at full steam with a good track on the ball, I soon pulled up short to avoid crashing into the stands (which were empty and completely devoid of any spectators). The ball dropped to the ground a few feet from me…in fair territory. Both runners scored and the batter waltzed into second. Of course in the box score it looked like a 350-foot gapper to the fence, but that wasn’t how it happened in reality.

It’s possible that my starter status could have survived, or even improved, except for one minor additional incident: the bottom of the 1st inning.

The EAHS squad managed to put together a few hits and I came to bat with two outs and the bases loaded (recalling this, I tend to think I was batting sixth instead of ninth because I don’t believe we’d yet scored in the 1st inning). It was then that a second cardinal sin of Coach Taylor’s Rules and Regulations precipitated itself, Rule Number 12. With a 2-2 count, a pitch came in which I thought was well outside. Apparently the home plate umpire thought differently as he quickly rung me up. I slinked back to the bench with the bat still on my shoulder and a backward ‘K’ in the book.

Coach Taylor--bless his heart—gave me a partial benefit of the doubt, allowing me to finish out another inning in the field. But when the 3rd inning commenced, he requested in not so many words that I find a comfortable position on the bench. I quietly sat down, closed the clasp on my ball and chain, and winced as my good friend and teammate, Ram, was summoned to The Position Where Bench Players Go To Die.

“Ramrod, left field!”