I Hate Baseball

I hate baseball.

            Whenever I see it on a television I become very tired and somewhat angry. The tired I don’t think I have to explain. If I wanted to do surgery without a local anesthetic, I would certainly suggest either baseball or cricket be playing, because even if I woke up in the middle, I would be unable to actually gather enough consciousness to feel pain. And even a really short baseball game takes at least five hours, plus commercial breaks. (A cricket game will last three days, plus commercial and meal breaks).

            I used to live in Pennsylvania where there was only one-way to prove you were manly (well, that pre-adolescent idiot version on manliness): Sport. At first, I tried martial arts, but I gave up on it after two embarrassing weeks that told me, 1) I would never even be able to touch my toes and 2) that flexibility is apparently important to every aspect of martial arts, so realistically, that wasn’t going to fly. Also, they place undo emphasis on being “good” and “adequate”, which I found discriminatory. I wanted to sue, but my parents wouldn’t given me an advance on my allowance (although, come to think of it they never gave me an allowance period) or access to my college fund, so once again I was foiled by lack of money.

            My second attempt to become an athlete was slightly more successful, and that was in the arena of baseball. It wasn’t successful, I should point out, it was if anything pathetic. I kept using the little t when all my teammates were hitting pitches. It doesn’t help my build is more suited for less “athletic sports” like magic cards, competitive Star Craft, Pokémon, things like that. I really shouldn’t have been playing baseball, at all, but there was a huge push in the neighborhood to do so, or at least that’s how it seemed to me. Because I’m pretty sure everyone played baseball. There was a horror of teams. The only people I knew who weren’t on a baseball team were the same people who loitered on the playground well into their teens and the ones who attend conventions wearing Spock ears or Spike Spiegel hair.

Now clearly, I should be in one or both of those groups, not on the dirty diamond in my sadly sagging dirty-white pants and that pathetically cheap t-shirt with the Montgomery logo on it, which was Montgomery with a baseball, on fire, below it. And in front of me, is the goddamned tee, and ahead of me I can see the pitcher, who even at eight has that pitcher look down, he’s bored and he’s sorting of fidgeting and kicking the dirt. Behind me, I can hear my coach cursing me and all of my teammates mocking me, and so I hit the ball, and it flies…right in front of the pitcher. So he picks it up, and throws it to the first baseman and, without even running, I am forced to do the walk of shame back to the dug out, to the very end of the bench where I just slumped down, and hoped no one sees me. I’m wondering how much Spock ears cost.

But, the liability I provided to the team was offset when my coach discovered something I was really good at, which was getting hit with the baseball, so that the team would get a walk. And so that I would be punished for being crap at baseball. Of course, that was mostly implied, but generally you don’t construct a strategy that involves one of your players getting hit unless its football or you hate them.  So the next time I went up to bat, my coach told me that I shouldn’t use the tee, and that I should step into the pitch, which seemed weird to me but I though, well he’s the professional. He wasn’t, of course, he was a dick, but I was eight and sometimes pretended I was Buzz Light-year, so I didn’t really have the where-with-all to figure that out. So I did what he told me to, and I got hit. And it really hurt.

It also worked, so this kept going on, week after week, until my dad finally came to a game, and saw that whenever I went up to bat, I’d get hit. And my coach would seem really happy, and my dad, being a scientist, put two and two together quite nicely. And on the ride home, he seemed pretty pissed, and I didn’t really talk to him because he was mad about something I’d done, so instead I just almost motionless, playing Pokémon Yellow…which is so nerdy, I don’t even believe I’ve done it.

So, the next day I was all ready, I had the pants, the shirt, the hat with its mesh backing, and I was waiting in the car, until my dad came out and explained that we weren’t going to practice, and that actually he’d taken me off of the team. Which made me really excited. Because now I could try and capture Mew Two, despite also being terrible at Pokémon.

I should say, before you leave this story with the impression that I am a member of the non-cool clique of Freaks and Geeks, that haven’t played any Pokémon game in almost seven years. I’d also like to point out that until about ninth grade I played on a string of highly non-competitive soccer teams, which prepared me for both losing and Sky1 Sports. However, I haven’t played baseball from that day to this, and the only time I’ve watched it was in 2004 when the Red Sox beat the Yankees. Although, living in Massachusetts at that time made it almost impossible to avoid baseball. Since then I’ve created a 1950’s style nuclear bunker, in which to weather the annual storm of baseball mania. It hasn’t helped my grades any but so what?