By Rick Stanton
5.7 ounces. That’s what a baseball weighs. And it’s really hard. And when it comes at you around 90+ mph, it can be scary.
The other day, a guy named Tim Anderson of the Chicago White Sox hit a home run in the fourth inning of a game against the Kansas City Royals. And after he hit it, he demonstrated his delight by making a rather dramatic flip of his bat toward the White Sox dugout.
The next time Anderson came up to bat, he got drilled in the butt by Royals pitcher Brad Keller. If Mr. Anderson had any respect for the game that pays him un-Godly amounts of money, he would have known it was coming.
I’d guess that I probably got hit on purpose about a dozen times during my 35 years playing baseball and fast-pitch softball, because I behaved like an idiot, too.
In 1974, I played fast-pitch softball for a beer team in Longview. To debut the season, there was a “jamboree,” where a half-dozen teams played three innings against each other. Longview was a hotbed for men’s fast pitch back then. It mattered to a lot of people.
In my initial at bat against a guy named Mansel Peterson, I hit a homer on his first pitch. I must admit that I admired the flight of the ball for a moment or two before beginning to run. My next time up, Peterson was still on the mound.
I put one foot into the batter’s box, looked to the coach at third and, when I turned to look at the pitcher, the ball already was coming—right at my head. There’s a term ballplayers use when that happens: It’s called assholes and elbows. Which means you’re doing whatever you need to do to bail out and not get killed.
Mansel was about 6’5” and burly, a convicted felon, he could throw a softball through drywall and he was mad at me. A softball, by the way, is not soft and it weighs more than 5.7 ounces.
After recovering and checking to see if I’d fouled myself, I started to get back into the box, and here it came again—only a touch closer to my brain. I was not, by nature, a hot dog, but that’s how it rolled that day. Behave badly, disrespect the moment and you could count on the fact you were going to eat some dirt, if not the ball. And I deserved it.
While I don’t condone head hunting, like some of the great pitchers of the past did (think Bob Gibson or Don Drysdale), hitting someone in the butt after being an idiot should require nothing more than a smile and fast trot down to first.
There’s a lot of discussion these days about what a hitter should do when he gets drilled by a pitcher on purpose. There are those who say payback pitches are inappropriate in today’s game.
I disagree, and those who think I’m wrong will call me a dinosaur and out of touch with today’s attempts to make the game relevant to a younger audience.
To you I say this: You probably never played an inning in your life, and if you did, you probably never hit the ball out of the infield. In life, not just baseball, when you’re an idiot, there should be consequences.
As for the issue of attracting a younger audience, turn the centerfield stands into a tavern and charge $10 for a beer. That seems to be working in Seattle.
https://www.amazon.com/Baseball-Codes-Beanballs-Bench-Clearing-Unwritten/dp/030727862X
Coffman,
In a previous lifetime I had a (printing) paper sales rep in common with a competitor. He told me the story of chatting on the phone with the other print shop owner, who suddenly began to slur his words and babble. The astute sales rep instantly hung up and called the printer’s secretary. He explained to her that he thought the owner was having a stroke. He was. Due to the rep’s quick observation and response, the man was saved and lived to fight another day.
I’m writing in response to Rick Stanton’s April 17 Gutless in Seattle column. Would somebody please check on him. Mind you, having never met the man, I only know what he looks like from the fifth-grade photo you post next to his columns and from reading his tangential observations on baseball, the Bainbridge commute and his death marches through Pioneer Square and Capitol Hill.
Baseball is not a sport I follow, so everything I know about it I’ve gleaned from his columns, Kevin Costner and Yogi Berra aphorisms. Rick’s voice is normally a bit raucous, to the point and seemingly unafraid of ruffling a few feathers. Last week he was unduly polite and quiet. When he should have been castigating the mayor (as well as the letter writer) he was polite. Instead of his usual strident voice, he was murmuring in a soft tone that belies his inner fire. Would you please check on him.
Seattle certainly has become the capital of the silent majority. We continually dumb it down to the lowest common denominator and then attempt to divide that by zero. Or table the discussion for another 25 years. Or we complain with an anonymous voice and offer no solutions.
Thank you for initiating the cry for a “Homeless Central Facility.” Your clarion call and excellent suggestion of a “first step” for initiating the fix hopefully will be heard and acted upon in the immediate future. How may I help?
As always, Your friend, David Bethlahmy
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