At least Charlie Brown got to be the pitcher

Summer's here, and what better time to talk about why I hated Little League so much. Mind you, I say hated Little league, not baseball. Fact is, I loved baseball. I loved playing baseball, watching baseball, listening to baseball - I just loved baseball, and the summers of my youth were an endless routine of doing my chores, playing ball, eating my lunch, playing ball, goofing around, playing ball, and then sitting down to supper and waiting for all the other kids to finish eating their suppers so we could go outside and play some more ball. Just tape up the bat, tape up the ball, choose sides and play, play, play.

But that was street baseball. You know, 3 or 4 to a side, the crack in the sidewalk was first base, the manhole was second, the lightpole was third, and that funny looking cement thing in the middle of the street was home. It was an unorganized, ad hoc, anything goes kind of baseball where the kids chose the teams and the kids made the rules and we didn't stop playing until it was too dark to see. It was all the fun of baseball with none of the fuss and bother.

Which brings me to Little League. Now I don't want to say that Little League was all a drag. There were some points in it's favor. First of all, you got to wear a uniform in Little League, and believe me, when you're 9 or 10 years old that's a BIG DEAL. What kid wouldn't want to be a Modern Ice and Cold Storage Dodger or a Royal Crown Cola Red, and if you were old enough you even got to wear cleats which just went way beyond cool. You also got to play on a real baseball diamond in Little League, with a pitchers mound and a backstop, and that was just about as real as it gets. Yes, there were advantages to playing in Little League. Unfortunately, there were also major drawbacks.

Major drawback number one (numero uno, as they say), without a doubt, was the grownups. Nothing spoils the fun more than having a bunch of grownups get involved. I remember times we'd be playing in the street when the grownups would come out to join us, and that was always a major drag. They'd hog all the action, and start giving us pointers and telling us what to do, and worst of all, they'd force us to let the girls play!!

"Now come on, Butch, let Vicki play. You know, she wants to play too".
"Aw, but Dad, she's a GIRL."
"I don't care. She wants to play so you let her have a turn at bat."
"Oh, alright", Butch would say, and then turn around disdainfully to the other kids in the field. "You can sit down now, my sister's gonna bat."

Little League was full of grownups, and though they probably meant well (most of 'em, anyways), they just got in the way. I hated playing with all those grownups around.

But the worst thing about Little League, bar none, was practice. If you wanted to play, YOU HAD TO GO TO PRACTICE, and I hated practice. I mean I really hated practice. For those of you who never played Little League, let me describe practice. Everyone takes their positions around the diamond and the coach stands at home plate with a bat in his hand and hits you the ball. My first position was second base, so there I would stand at second base for, I don't know, hours, days, years...it all seemed like an eternity to me, and every now and then I'd hear a

"Heads up, second base, this one's coming to you."

And the coach would hit me a little ground ball, and I'd stand in front of it, and it would bounce off my glove, and I'd pick it up and throw it to first. And then I'd stand around and wait, I don't know, hours, days, years...it all seemed like an eternity, for my turn to come around again. And all the while I'm out there I'd be thinking "Is practice over?" or "Can I bat now?" or "Can we go home. I'm gonna miss Batman."

Sometimes coach would change things up to try to make it more interesting.

"Heads up, second base. Plays at home."

(Coaches are always saying "Heads up", and it's funny, I still hear people using that phrase. I'll get an email saying "Just wanted to give you a heads up, we're getting ready to close on this one", and I'll send back a reply like "Ok, coach." I guess that's one reason why people think I'm weird.)

Anyways, "Heads up, second base. Plays at home."
"Ok, coach."
"Keep you're eye on the ball. Look it all the way into your glove."
"Ok, coach."

And he would hit me a little ground ball, and I'd stand in front of it, and it would bounce off my glove, and I'd pick it up and throw it to the catcher standing at home plate. And this would go on and on and on, make a play, wait your turn, make a play, wait your turn, until all thoughts of happiness, all feelings of youthful joy would just disappear down the drainhole of my existence. But you see, we weren't there just to play, we were there to learn, like in school. Yeah, just like school.

So anyways, I played Little League for 2 years and then gave it up. One day my father said to me "Are you sure you want to play Little League? You don't look you're having much fun out there", and I saw my out and took it. Like I said, my first position was second base, but it soon become obvious to everyone on the team, including myself, that I couldn't catch the ball, so they made me (what else) the catcher.

I should explain that the catcher on a Little League team doesn't really catch anything, and there are no signs or anything like that either. If you're lucky you've got one, maybe two pitchers on the team and each of them has only got one pitch anyways, so signs are pretty useless. Usually a catcher just spend most of his time looking around the edges of the backstop for the ball because Little League pitchers are lucky if they can throw the ball over the plate maybe 2 out of 5 times. The rest of the time God only knows where it's going to go. So you crouch, wait, reach for the ball, and then look around to see where it landed.

Ah, the life of a Little League catcher. Squatting there in your equipment, taking foul balls off your knuckles and toes, and knowing, no matter what, no one's gonna hit the ball to you. How fondly I do recall, and the memory I cherish above all others, the memory dearest to my heart, is the memory of the time a foul ball bounced behind home plate and hit me right in the cup. Personally, and let me state this with sincerest gratitude and appreciation, I think that mankind can consider it itself truly blessed that someone had the foresight to invent the cup. If not, I may never have been able to sing baritone in the choir. But let me also say with equal sincerity, that taking one in the cup had to be one of the most embarrassing moments in my life. I mean, I know everyone in the stands had to hear the thundering, resonating "pock" sound it made - Geez, you could have heard it clear across the valley. And then, as I'm laying there on the ground, more out of numbness than pain, I just knew all those people were in the stands snickering, putting two and two together and perhaps too shocked to break out in hysterical laughter. That's a moment only a catcher can understand. No second baseman ever had to suffer through something like that. No left fielder, no shortstop...

Ah, the life of a Little League catcher.