Senior year. He wanted to make this a memorable year. There was a new coach at the helm, as the previous one had stepped down after 14 consecutive losing seasons and never more than 2 league wins in a single year. Coach Torresani meant business. There would be baseball drills every night, a fall league that might as well have been mandatory and a new weight room regimen. The year flew fast and tryouts came and went. He didn’t worry so much this time, he had been a member of this team already and this year he was with the team all year long. Sure enough he made it. Varsity. He was the best sunflower seed spitter on the team. And he wasn’t last in the depth chart either. Just another kid on the bench. Although he wasn’t a kid anymore. He was 18 and had played the sport for 13 years. He gave it all he had and it was worth every minute of it. His team won 8 games that year, 6 of them were league games. They were one win short of the playoffs. The best season in Abington Baseball in two decades. He was part of it. He was a baseball player.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Now or Never
Junior year. He had finally accepted that some people were made to be baseball players and others were not. A 5 foot 5, 125 pound body wasn’t ideal to be taking hacks at 80 mile-per-hour pitches or throwing a runner out at home from 330 feet out in right field. But just because he had accepted that didn’t mean that it was over. The dream would never die. He was going to play high school baseball. Going through tryouts with a nasty case of the flu, things did not work out like he wanted them to. After the second day of tryouts he confronted the coach. “Coach, I know that I didn’t make this team last year. I want to be a part of it this year. Please let me get the chance to play baseball. Know that I’m out here sick as a dog trying to make this team. Thank you.”
Two days later, he looked at the posted team. It was in alphabetical order by last name. He should be in the middle of the pack. He followed his finger down the lined-yellow paper. His heart sunk. He was down to the bottom, and there it was. The very last name penciled in along the others. He might have been the last person to make the team, but tryouts were over. He was in.
Bullshit
It was seventh grade all over again, only this time it hurt a lot worse. It was tenth grade, his sophomore year. It was almost now or never time. He had worked out with the team all year long. He was in the weight room every other day, and running miles around the school on the days he was not pumping iron. He threw indoors with the team. He had his mom pick him up every day after school at 5 when he was done workouts. All that for nothing. “Fuck you, Coach Fiorino. I hope you lose every game,” he said to himself.
A Bright Future?
Last game of the season. He steps up to the plate. He draws a walk on four pitches. Steals second. Moves to third on a grounder. Scores the winning run. Guess the coaches should have played him a little bit more huh?
The Cursive A
He looked down the list for his name on the 9th grade baseball team. There it was. He had done it. He might have only been five foot 3 while everyone else was a mammoth five foot 8 and more, but he was on the team. He would be wearing the maroon and white uniform with the cursive A on the hat.
Too Small
Make way for the 5 foot 5, 120 pound giants. Move over small kids. Puberty wins. He may have only been 4 foot 11 and 95 pounds but hey – he was a bar mitzvah for crying out loud! Didn’t that make him a man? Apparently not. Apparently his size 4 nike cleat ran just a little too small. Nevermind that the coach threw like a girl and that he didn’t know the first thing about baseball, the kid was not going to make the team. His friends half a foot taller than him? Sure, they make the cut. "You, kid, will be playing summer ball, not with the school team," the coach told him. All he had to do was keep gutting it out, wait for that growth spurt, wait for some hair under his arms, wait for that one-size-fits-all stretchy cap to finally fit him. Wait for puberty.
From that day forward, he would draw pencil lines in the inside of his closet door, measuring himself to see if his growth spurt had come. Once a month he would convince himself that he was taller, weigh himself and convince himself that he was heavier no matter what the measurements read. He was going to make the team.
Be Like Jersey
By the summer of 2001, it was time to prepare for every little-leaguers dream – the Little League World Series. It was only a matter of time before they’d face Japan in the finals and bring the trophy back to the United States of America like those kids from Toms River, New Jersey. First they just had to take care of some petty regional qualifiers. No problem, right? The field was amped up with snack stands, an announcers booth, and caution tape around the dugouts to keep the children’s parents from seeking autographs mid-game. Fast forward to the 4th inning and the game was over. The 10-run-rule, or mercy rule for those unfamiliar with the rules of little league, had taken effect. Fishtown 11 East Abington 1. So much for that dream. After finishing up the regionals in a much more quiet way, one more win and two more losses, without the announcers, snack stands, or caution tape, it was time to focus on the next step of his baseball career – junior high.
Fifty-Nine Fifty
New camp, new times, new style. The adjustable baseball hats were out and Fifty-Nine Fifty’s were in. Fiited hats, the kind the major leaguers wore. The only problem was the kid’s head hadn’t quite grown up to the fitted hat standards. Nevertheless, he had to have a fitted hat, head-size be damned! Everyone had one at Camp Anglewood.
As for that tiny head of his, well that presented quite the problem. After searching every corner of the local mall with his dad in search of a six-and-five-eighths Cleveland Indians hat to absolutely no avail, drastic measures had to be taken. The Cheltenham Square. The biggest possible ghetto for a mall that could possibly be in the near area. Half-an-hour away and infested with guns, crime and robbery, their HatWorld sold that precious hat. An hour after determining this information, the kid and his brave dad marched through the mall with their heads held high and purchased that Cleveland Indians hat, the smallest possible size available. Leaving the Cheltenham Square, the dad told his kid that if he ever found himself in that mall again that he would be robbed nine times out of ten and to just let the people have what they wanted, and that material items were replaceable but life was not.
After trying on the fifty-nine fifty in every way possible, the kid could see that it was still too big for his 10-year-old head. Dad to the rescue again, this time however with a sticky bandage that he cut up and placed inside the fold of the hat. Boom – perfect fit. After a little curvature to the brim and the removal of the stickers (it was cooler to take them of back in those days) he was ready to rock. By the end of the summer, that hat had fallen in the lake on more than one occasion.
The Toughest Decision of His Life
The toughest decision he had to face came on his first day of camp as a 7-year-old. If the wrong decision was made, a disaster could be in store. How could he possibly get his sunscreen on when the balance of the world was sitting idly on his bed? Red Phillies hat, or blue Phillies hat? He still couldn’t decide when his mom told him to grab his lunchbox and get in the car. He grabbed both. He asked his cousin Joey which hat he thought was the choice for the day and Joey responded by choosing the same red Phillies hat awkwardly hovering around his ears. The kid put it on, the blue hat sitting longingly in his hands. Wasn’t there a way to make this horrible, no-good, rotten, awful problem go away? Ah-ha! The light bulb flashed above the kid’s head with the most brilliant idea. “Wear both hats,” he said to himself. He placed his Red Phillies hat backwards on his bushel of frighteningly blonde hair. Unstrapping the blue hat and adjusting it to be a size bigger, he placed it frontward on top of his other hat. He had the ultimate tandem – the double hat. How much cooler could he look than with two hats on in opposite directions, a lime green striped tank top, a bright blue bathing suit, and the not-so-timeless water-shoes that everyone seemed to rock back in the 90’s. The camp season of 1996 had officially kicked off and so too had his style. The two hats would never be worn individually for the rest of the summer.
Wishes of the 60's
Catering to his love of baseball, the kid’s mom directs him towards the television one dreary day to watch a movie – about baseball. “The Sandlot,” it was called and it shaped the kid’s life from that day forward. He weaved the story of 1960’s children of the game into his own baseball life. Out with the Nike shoes, in with a fresh set of Converse “Chuck Taylor” All-Stars, the “shoes guaranteed to make a kid run faster and jump higher.” Goodbye dislike for chocolate. Hello tons of tootsie rolls in one cheek as pretend chewing tobacco. And of course he always had to be playing with a baseball signed “Babie Ruth,” a testament to Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez’s unique spelling of the Babe’s name. The kid had been officially transformed from an obsessed tee-baller, to a walking tribute to the ultimate children’s baseball movie.
Years later the kid has his first love interest, a girl who incidentally loved "The Sandlot" as well. One of the factors in the beginning of their relationship was his ability to repeat word for word so many parts of the movie. Sometimes baseball geeks do win out.
Independence Day
July 4th, 1993 marked his first Phillies game. He couldn’t remember much, except for the glowing fireworks after the game. But he still remembered.
The Beginning
He first picked up a baseball bat in hisgrandparent’s backyard with hisUncle and cousin. After swinging and missing repeatedly with the oversized, orange, plastic bat, he finally managed to make contact with the wiffle ball – off of a tee.
From then on, you would be hard-pressed to find the kid without a baseball glove, bat, or just plain old baseball in one of his tiny hands. It was baseball non-stop, whether in the house, by the pool, in the park, on the beach or in bed.