A Random Childhood Memory

It is a well documented fact that I am, shall we say, eccentrically attached to the game of tennis. I have nearly a thousand hours of matches saved on video tape dating back to about 1986 or so (I swear that's true!), which I hope at some point to transfer to DVD so I can actually watch them, as our VCR is... ah... let's say it's actually near the home theater system. I love to play, as it's the only athletic activity for which I have shown even remedial aptitude. This isn't to say that I don't love to play other sports - I do (when we were living on the backside of Lookout Mountain (in a town called "Hinkle", if you can believe it) early in my high school career, I would bike the 5 miles to the front side of the mountain so I could attend a 2 hour swin practice and then bike the 5 miles back home (and I performed both of these tasks fairly well, if not spectacularly); this feat now would kill me somewhere during the first 8 seconds after jumping in the pool)! But my luck with other sports has been spotty.

Near the home where I grew up (on the front side of Lookout Mountain) there was a place called, simply, "The Commons". It was a regular paradise for kids during the summer; it had a huge playground, a little league baseball diamond, a larger soccer field, and 4 tennis courts in various states of disrepair. The Commons also sported a lovely hillside that looked as if it had been recently strip mined, and so, being in Georgia (but just barely - in fact, it may even be in Tennessee - I suddenly cannot recall where the state line runs on the mountain - it has been many years since I went up there, since my parents moved down to Florida), exposed an enormous bank of red clay, with other kinds of clay mixed in. A day at the Commons went like this:

1. Dropped off in the morning.
2. An activity of some sort: t-ball "practice", tag on the field, general pandemonium on the playground, etc.
3. lunch, consisting of whatever your parents bagged for you and a soda from the machine (cost like a quarter back then), which was eternally on the verge of running out of whatever you wanted, so you had to get it early in the game.
4. more activities, sometimes a t-ball "game" which consisted primarily of kids in uniform running in random-appearing patterns on a field meant for something else entirely
5. just before the parents arrived, "digging for clay". This activity was the best one of all, as it meant digging through the layers and layers of red clay for that special gleam of blue or green clay which, if you were so inclined (I never was) was about as fun to play with as other clay, which is to say, not much, but at least it wasn't red. Digging for it sure was a lot of fun, however, so we did that as much as possible.
   

The arch-activater was Coach Stamps. He coached every single t-ball team, was pretty much everywhere at once, keeping an eye on everything. There were also minions, and I can almost place faces to them, but not quite. They remain in memory as warm, indistinct but friendly prescences, and I never once felt like the Commons wasn't a safe place to be.

Until T-Ball.

For those of you who grew up in places without it, T-Ball is to baseball what training wheels are to a bicycle. You play it on a normal little league field, only instead of having the ball pitched to you, the ball rests on top of a large plastic tee, like an overgrown golf tee. The rest of the game is more or less the same, excepting for various oddities like the bat-slinging rule - if you sling the bat behind you after you swing you stand a reasonable chance of braining the kid on deck - if you did it (wether or not you actually brained the kid on deck), you were automatically out. To my knowledge this is not a rule in baseball (in fact in baseball I think you can carry the bat with you as you go, and I always wondered why no one ever did this... you could scare the bejeezus out of a first baseman this way), but The Commons was a safe haven, so no braining allowed. Also you play with an extra person out in the field, called the short-fielder. This person is supposed to roam the area behind second base in front of center field, catching the mighty pop-flies that t-ball invariably produced by the thousands as kids went through growth spurts and lost all modicum of muscle control. A short-fielder is quick and has a reliable glove.

Ours was not. Our short fielder was a kid by the name of Quentin Tugman. He was a year older but about 4 inches shorter than me. He was VERY quick, but the kid couldn't catch a cold. What would usually happen was that a ball would get lofted over Quentin's head (not hard to do - he was small for his age) and out to the center fielder. At this point the order should have been, center fielder fields ball, throws to appropriate base, or, excepting this, in the case of the center field who does not have the slightest idea where to throw the ball, throws to the short fielder, who would then relay it onward as appropriate.

In reality, standard procedure for our team was that Quentin Tugman would miss the ball over his head, but instead of turning around and putting his hands up to act as a big target for the center fielder, Quentin would charge out to center field, demand the ball from the center fielder, and when the center fielder would refuse, Quentin would then attempt to beat the living shit out of the center fielder in order to get the ball, and the times that he managed to do this he would then turn back towards the field of play and, a) find that he took so long beating the shit out of the center fielder that the kids on base were on their second or third go-around the bases, or b) see someone still running, and then heave the ball in some perfectly random direction, not always towards the field of play, in an attempt (it must be supposed) to throw someone out.

I was the center fielder.

I spent my T-Ball career getting the hell beat out of me by a smaller (but older) kid who flat out refused to lend any credence whatsoever to the idea that T-Ball was a team sport. Quentin Tugman dropped so many pop flies it's a wonder the second baseman didn't run over to where he was and pound the crap out of him on general principle. Unfortunately, honesty compells me to admit that the only time I can actually remember a ball getting hit so far out to center field that even Quentin didn't want to make a run for it, I was so amped up by the idea of getting to field the ball by myself for once that I charged back to the wall (where the ball had just bounced), grabbed the ball, turned in to the field of play, reared back to fire a mighty salvo to the plate and lost the ball out of my hand entirely, flipping it back over the center field wall for a home run. Refusing to admit defeat, I vaulted the wall (an impressive feat - it was much taller than me), ran down the hill behind the field and into the weed infested lot behind it, spent a good 3-4 minutes looking for it, found it, ran back up the hill, re-vaulted the wall, and fired the ball in to a very surprised player for the other team, who had taken the field after the merciful end of the inning.

All this is to say, it wasn't necesarily a bad idea for the ball to be taken away from me, but I was damned if I was going to give it up without a fight. What's the fucking point of being out there if all you have to look forward to is some snotty little brat beating the hell out of you to keep you from making an idiot out of yourself? I'll take the embarassment of making my own mistakes over the embarassment of letting someone else do it for me, thank you very much.

Unfortunately, my T-Ball woes were not limited to the field, as I also couldn't hit for shit. I mean it, I was hopeless at the plate. You'd think that nothing in the whole world could ever be easier than hitting a huge ball that's just sitting there, not moving, not making noise, not even trying to confuse you a little, but for some reason the way to do this successfully eluded me all but one time my whole life. Oh, I had the same waggle that the kids who could really hit had, I knew all the moves, the little rituals at the plate... but I was the only kid ever to strike out playing T-Ball. You might wonder, how is this possible, when nobody is pitching?

Well.

Imagine that at a particular point in a kid's growth, the ball is right about at his chest level, and he just can't quite get enough loft on his toes to make solid contact with the ball. Instead, he keeps making solid contact with the T, and the ball would just plop down to the ground, as gravity dictates should come to pass in this situation. Foul ball. Now image this kid doing that about 50 times in a row.

I just COULD NOT hit the damned ball. Finally, the plate umpire got the bright idea of removing the top portion of the T (the T was actually two tubes, one inside the other, so the height of the T could be adjusted for the kid - you might think that this was a solution, but the inner T was already down as far as it would go), which put the ball about 8 inches lower, so at last I could reach it. I thanked the plate unpire, wound up mightily, and swung right over the ball, missing it completely. The umpire looked at me and said, "Strike 3, kid, go sit down, will you please?" I did.

The one time, the one time I remember actually making terrific contact with the ball, I got a double. For some reason the stars aligned, the planets were in harmony, my lunch-soda-induced-sugar-high hadn't quite worn off yet, whatever, and I creamed the ball into right center field. I kept my wits about me long enough to remember that I was supposed to run, and made it all the way to second, actually driving in 2 runs, the first RBIs of my life.

But I slung the fucking bat.

They called me back to the dugout, not even a little bit sorry about the state of affairs.

"What's wrong?" I asked.
"You slung the bat. You're out."
"Oh, man, can't you give me a break just this once? I NEVER get a hit! I swear I'll never do it again"
"Siddown. You'll get 'em next time."

Needless to say, I did not.

Of the many memories I have surrounding The Commons, however, the one I remember most vividly was my first little league practice. No tees any more, just some kid throwing a ball in the general direction of the plate. We were in a sort of free-play mode as Coach Stamps was talking to a parent and hadn't yet gotten around to Organizing, and on a whim I grabbed a bat and trudged to the plate. The kid on the mound laughed at me, I took my stance, and he pitched the ball.

I knocked the shit out of it.

Hit an absolute screamer over the head of the kid at second base, but instead of watching my shot go into center field, I had to watch as the second baseman leaped up and made an absolutely spectacular catch of the ball over his head and mostly behind him.

I was so infuriated over this turn of events that a slung the bat down (I was out anyway), decided baseball wasn't for me, and ran across the parking lot to the tennis courts to see if I could pick up a game. I never played competitive baseball after that (softball does NOT count - softball is an excuse to drink beer and get dirty, in that order). All through grade school I played football, soccer, whatever the seasonal sport was... but when Summer came, I swam with the swim team instead of heading for the diamond.

I still remember the smell of the dirt in the field, red clay all over my shoes, fabulously hot afternoons on the lawn playing tether ball with Kevin Hunt, the chalky taste of the drinking fountain, the bliss of a Coke during lunch. And I will always remember the moment at which I first made that real decision : this is not for me, I am not built for it; I will try something new now. This led me to tennis. And so here I am. I love to watch basball now (although I avoided it for many years after my T-Ball days), but softball is as far as I'll go towards a reconciliation.