Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer, it is said, was once handed five baseballs of different weights in quarter-ounce gradations. Holding each for an instant, he correctly put them in order.
Base Paths knows “inflategate” too, the only time he ever influenced an outcome from off the field. (On field, it was usually an “L”).
He figures it was about 1997 (calculations later), mid-August, slim sandlot pickings around here. He drifted off to Delaware Park to catch Muny Double-A, a mostly recreational league in which many players vastly overestimate their place in the game’s hierarchy. (Another time, when he was about 70, one offered him a few cuts at batting practice, then purposefully threw at his head.)
Here, he set up his chair and scorebook on the first-base side, the lowering sun at his back, and went to get the lineups. The team on that side began to harass him about his failure to provide adequate coverage over the summer. Really nasty. The third-base team gave him some ribs, too, but jokingly, as if in an open-air locker room.
As the day faded and the temperature fell, the first-base team, whom he now thinks of as the Whine Merchants, trailed 5-4 in the final inning. Base Paths picked up his chair and book and headed toward his car. They had two runners on and two out against a tiring pitcher in his late 40s, and if they rallied to tie or win, he didn’t want to see it. The batter fired a few more insults at his back.
Then came a foul ball which rolled into the thick, untended grass at his feet. As he bent to pick it up, he noticed, just inches away, an old ball that had given its all to batting practice, wrinkled, stiff, slightly oval and deader than Milton Berle.
Leaving the game ball where it lay – also soiled, by six-plus innings — he picked up the relic, walked toward the foul line and threw it out to the pitcher. (In this situation, the base umpire was on the far side.) He knows it had to be a while ago, as he hasn’t been able to throw a ball that far on the fly in some time.
The old pitcher didn’t need to be Jim Palmer to know what he had. As Base Paths picked up where he had left off, the ancient moundsman threw it right into the ego of the mouthy batter, who connected with all his might and, with a distinctive “thunk,” popped to short, ending the game. Base Paths kept from laughing until his windows were up and he was out of the lot, real game ball in the trunk.
Signal back to Base Paths via pollyndoug@hotmail.com
Leave a Reply