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10/22/02 Bill Vs. Baseball Hey Trying to get back into writing mode, not up to getting back into Drains today, too intense, so I'm going to whip this out instead, prime the pump as it were. I think I'm going to relate some of my adventures playing baseball. I've always been athletically inclined- not bragging, this is simply true. I was a good football player, a very good soccer player, and an excellent boxer, won every single one of my amateur bouts by knock out (all three of them, but then again, how many did you win?). Had that left hook to the gut, they drop their gloves, then overhand straight right hammer to the fucking temple down COLD, my boxing coach at the time told me that was Max Baer's finishing combo, and if it's good enough for Jethro's dad, it's good enough for me (fucking WORKS). But it was on the baseball diamond that I absolutely fucking shone. I had a hell of an eye at the plate (especially before I started wearing glasses, which wasn't as long ago as some of you might think), I hit for power and average, I could fly on the base paths, I'd steal your ass crazy, till I destroyed my knee (the first of several times) trying to spike this guy, as related previously, and I had an excellent glove, when I played third, NOTHING got past my ass. And I just fucking GOT the game, you know, after just a game or two, playing it was second nature to me, like I was born doing it. But my greatest gift was my arm. I could throw dead fucking hard, dead fucking accurate. As a pitcher I didn't have a curve, slide, change, anything like that. I just threw the hard ball, and either you hit it or you didn't, and at the age of twelve I could throw it past most grown men. Hard to tell what might have happened if we hadn't moved to West Virginia, but that's a story for another time. Let's go back to a spring in the late 60's (yeah, I know, way back). The previous fall we'd just moved out to the MD suburb of Camp Springs, from the very genuine DC ghetto we'd lived in prior to that (ask anyone who's familiar with DC about Chesapeake Street- it ain't uptown, trust me). My dad takes me down to sign up for baseball, and because I'm new, and they've got a lot of new kids signing up this year, I get put on an expansion team, and my dad, being my dad, ends up coaching it. I crack on him a lot these days, but my dad was always the dead fucking coolest dad in the neighborhood. He was the one that after work and on weekends was always out playing ball with the all the local kids, fuck that cutting the grass shit, always the first out with the fireworks on Fourth of July, God help you in the winter, he was a sledding machine, dad, I'm freezing, go on home then, I'm gonna sled some more. All my friends just adored him, most of my friends now who've met him can attest, he IS a damn cool guy. Back then they'd come to the door, "Can Mr. Bitner come out and play?", "You mean Billy?", "Nah, Billy's too weird, we mean Mr. Bitner." This league had the absolute best team names of all time- the Comets, the Jaguars, the Yellow Jackets, the Green Hornets (Green Lanterns would've been better, but what the hell), the Black Dragons, the Sphinxes- for Christ sake, the Sphinxes, how cool a name is that for a kid's baseball team? Stick yer Yankees up yer ass, you know? And us. The Nomads. The WHAT? Yeah, the Nomads, with our nice ORANGE uniforms (this was the psychedelic end of the 60's, remember). Kids on the other teams used to rag us mercilessly about the name, mostly cos they didn't know what it meant. K: Oh, the no mads. They're pussies, they don't get mad. Being an expansion team meant we had all the kids who hadn't been on a team last year, plus all the fucking rejects from the existing teams. We fucking reeked. Beside me, we had Mickey Watson. Mickey was low I.Q. I'm not sure what the current PC word for that is, so I won't even try. Mickey was mainstreamed, he went to class with us. He could read, poorly, but he struggled really hard, I guess the main benefit for him was socialization, cos he sure as shit didn't get educated. You could see Mickey's problems in his face, his eyes sat almost on top of one another, and never looked in the same direction at the same time. He'd tried to get on a team the year before, but none of them would have him. I remember his mom brought him down to the field our first practice or so, sort of apologetically said, "I don't suppose you'd let Mickey on your team?" My dad, being my dad, said "Fucking hell, yes, he can be on our team. Get your glove on, kid, and take the field. No, the field- no, out in the field, no- that way, yeah." Before every game Mickey had this chant- I can hear it now, just like he was right here with me- "Don't rain, don't rain, cos I wanna play a baseball game." Repeat, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. It could be a hundred degrees blazing sunlight from Hell, Mickey does this chant. It was almost amusing the first 17,000 times he did it. Bill, pouting on the ride home. D: What's your problem? My dad's a better person than I can ever hope to be. At first base we had Mike Ryan. I think he was a nice kid, but he was a lousy first baseman. He couldn't catch the ball. I asked my dad why he played a kid with such a bad glove at first, my dad said "He looks like a first baseman." Well, you can't argue with that, so I didn't. Mike had also just moved up from Texas, and in the two years we played together I don't think I ever understood a single word he said. B: Catch the ball! We also had the Frieze brothers, fraternal twins who looked absolutely nothing alike. Steve played second and was a certified pretty boy, and he knew it. He was just too damned cute, all blond and baby faced. One time he came to a game with one of his mother's scarves tied around his neck, like an ascot, my dad laughed so hard he cried- then made him take it off. Steve played second, and was decent, but as a ball player he wasn't a pimple on the ass of his brother Dave. Steve played so he could wave at the girls in the crowd. Dave played cos he was a ball playing son of a bitch. Dave looked nothing like Steve, in fact he resembled Mickey's brother a lot more, with the same pinched in kind of eyes, but Dave was an intense little mother fucker and I loved him for it, he was far and away my favorite team mate, he and I alternated between pitching and third base. B: How you hit so good with your eyes all googled up like that? Finally, there was our catcher, Ritchie Sonntag. If E.T were a female, and it had a baby by Don Knotts, it would've looked like Ritchie. He went maybe 90 pounds soaking wet, had about a foot and a half of pipe cleaner neck with a little egg head on the top of it, holding a buzz cut do and the biggest pair of fish lips you ever saw in your life. Ritchie was not a good ball player. He was catcher because both Dave and I were stone control pitchers, we'd give him signals in reverse, he just held his glove out and we'd put the pitch in it. His dad was this real oily, some kind of salesman, always tanned and wearing 60's swinger (which he and the Mrs. actually were, my dad tossed his dad from the bleachers once for soliciting during a game, serious) clothes kind of guy. They had an in ground, backyard pool, which was a big deal in that neighborhood at that time, I was invited over to swim a couple times that summer and did, but started begging off and making excuses cos Mrs. Sonntag would come out and join us, and she was all about falling out of this miniscule bathing suit she'd be wearing, made me real damn uncomfortable, couple years later and it would've been a different story, excuse me Ritchie but you need to go inside, I'm gonna fuck your mom, but by then they'd divorced and she and Ritchie had moved away. There were other kids on the team, obviously, but we'll end with Ritchie, because he was the beginning of the end, so to speak. As I've said, our boy Ritchie was basically worthless as a catcher. If there was ever a play at the plate, the pitcher would have to run in to make it, with Ritchie as quivering back up. It so happened one day we were playing The Yellow Jackets. I'm pitching, there was this Yellow Jacket side of beef named Jim Lantz on second base. Guy hits a single to left field, there's going to be a play at the plate, Ritchie is cowering somewhere behind the umpire, oh shit. I run in, cover the plate, Dave (God, I loved that kid, he could fucking PLAY BALL) takes the relay, turns and puts it right in my damn glove- and big Jim arrives seconds later. Now, Jim Lantz was a fucking freight train. He sees he's going to be tagged out so he hits me full fucking speed, trying to knock the ball loose- the hell with this sliding shit. I remember flying through the air, and seeing my feet framed by the sky- never a good sign-and the back of my head hitting the backstop, and then darkness, and then my dad standing over me. D: Billy, where are you at? I give Ritchie the fucking evil eye, say something like "Wish we had a CATCHER," and limp on out to the mound. I held on to the ball, Jim was tagged out, but they're all laughing and howling on the Yellow Jacket bench, high five-ing and shit, cos in the vernacular of the day, the fucker creamed me. Couple innings later, I will be totally damned, the same thing happened again, only worse. I'm covering the plate, big Jim smashes into me, not only knocks my hat off and the ball loose this time, he KNOCKED ME OUT OF ONE OF MY CLEATS. Holy shit, I thought I'd been hit by a truck. My dad comes out, stands me up, I'm all wobbly and rolling my big eyes, my nose is bleeding, Ritchie very helpfully hands me my cleat, gee thanks ya little monkey shit, my dad asks, "Do you need to come out?", I start to say "Yeah," when I look over at the Yellow Jacket bench just whooping it up and carrying on, at my fucking expense (for some reason, I was not a popular player in this league). "No," I said, "I'm okay." I just prayed that the game would last long enough for Jim to come back up to the plate, and sometimes even the prayers of a heathen are answered. Seventh inning, Big Jim's standing in the box, and my dad comes out to the mound. D: Billy, don't you dare- Yeah, bull fucking shit. Knock me through the backstop once, I might try and be a good sport and shake it off. Knock me through the backstop twice, Jimbo, and momma's taking your ass to the fucking dentist. He's standing there cocky as all hell, the guys on his bench yelling all kinds of shit, variations on a theme of how he'd punked my ass out twice, time to do it again. I reared back and threw one of the hardest pitches of my fucking life, right at the middle of his damn smirk. It remains one of the golden moments of my life. His eyes got big as saucers at the sudden realization of just how bad he'd fucked up, and he tried to duck, which only made it sweeter, cos that baseball hit him dead square in the forehead with a sound like Jesus saying, "Billy, welcome to Heaven." He went down on his face, cold as a fucking fish- when they rolled him over to try and revive him his mouth was full of dirt. The next day at school- I was told, he went to Morningside, I was Camp Springs- he still had the imprint of the ball's stitches on his ungodly swollen forehead, and when one of his teachers asked him what happened he broke down crying. I hope he still has nightmares about it, I swear I do. I turned away, smiling at a job well done- to see my dad already across the foul line and picking up speed, murder in his beady little eyes. I dropped my glove and ran like a fucking rabbit. Cut to my mom and little sister Lori, and probably my little baby sister, Tina, as well, out in the front yard, enjoying a pleasant spring evening, visiting with neighbors- Scritch, scritch. Scritch, scritch. M: Do you hear that? Scritch, scritch. ( . . . you little shit). M: Sounds like someone yelling, as well. SCRITCH, SCRITCH. (When I get my hands on you . . . ) M: Sounds like Bit. They look up to see me off in the distance, running to beat hell up the street, cleats striking sparks off the pavement (scritch, scritch), my dad still in hot pursuit, swearing at the top of his lungs. The ball field was a mile and a half from our house. I ended up being suspended for three games, and was absolutely furious with my dad. B: If you hadn't come after me I could have said it was an accident. There were other adventures- the following year I hit an umpire in the back of the head with a baseball- between innings, kind of hard to gloss something like that over, it took like 10 stitches to close up the cut, he threatened to sue and it got me kicked out for the rest of the year, I don't care to this fucking day, he was a CHEATING MOTHER FUCKER, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat- and my dad threw a bat at me from the dugout, it went spinning across the mound at waist height like some dreadnaught Frisbee, if it'd hit me there would've been hospital bills to pay, and probably jail time to serve, for Coach Bitner- before once again chasing me all the way home. I thought he was going to have a damn heart attack, you should've HEARD that man rage, "Goddamn you, don't you ever fucking LEARN?!", well, obviously not. However, I think I've got it out of my system, so we'll save the rest of the stories for another day. Up next, the complete Why Bill Eats Bugs, including the subtexts, The Day They Atom Bombed Carmody Hills Elementary School, and Nuclear Winter My Ass, Get That Crazy Kid In The House Bill
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