Welcome back to Little League baseball, guys! It’s good to ha–
What’s that, Carl? You want to be called what? Like Casey Stengel,
the great baseball manager? No? Like Kacey Musgraves, the great country songstress.
Mom and dad on board with that? Cool. Let me grab my clipboard.
All right, let’s try this again.
Welcome back, children, to Little League baseball. OK, so you all have
good winter? Play some basketball or hockey, did you? No? Well, what sports
did you kids play over the winter?
Fortnite does not count as a sport, Roberto. Neither does Minecraft.
I agree, it does help your hand-eye coordination. It also helps prepare your
glutes for another three months of riding the pine.
I usually start making my summer vacation plans around late January. This usually coincides with the first waves of cabin fever enveloping me along with the fourth layer of thermal clothing I've wriggled into to avoid hypothermia in my perpetually chilly New England colonial home.
While some would scour the internet travel sites in search of the best beaches in the tropics or perhaps a deal on a refreshing lakeside cottage in the woods, I click elsewhere.
I pore over the schedules for all the professional baseball teams within a 90-minute drive of my home. My goal: finding any and all weekday home games.
Mets legend Ed Charles, right, assists the author is showing off his 1969 World Series ring.
Spring is here again in the Northeast! It’s time to put away your warm winter clothes and dig out your equally warm but beer-proof Opening Day of Baseball Season clothes!
I’ll be doing that soon in preparation for today's New York Mets home opener, a near-annual ritual for me that includes the near-annual threat of the day being the coldest and/or wettest ever recorded for that date in history.
Maybe that’s why when I look back on all the Opening Days I’ve attended (22 unless my math fails me which it often does because ... writer), one of the most memorable was one where the game wasn’t even being played at the field.
Professional athletes -- baseball players, in particular -- are known for having very specific and downright odd pre-game rituals. Hall of Famer Wade Boggs, for example, always ate chicken. Contrarily, he wasn’t particular about whether it was cooked by his wife or mistress. Fans have their rituals, too. Here’s what has happened in the past 24 hours, just as it has for the past decade, leading up to my family’s annual excursion to see today's New York Mets home opener:
Baseball requires intense preparation, starting well before the first
pitch is every thrown. For this weekend's opening day of the local Little
League where I coach, this pre-season demanded an unprecedented
amount of ground work.
I’m not talking logistics or the political maneuvering. I mean literal “work on the grounds.”
A week ago, though, after I picked her up from high school tennis practice, she sat in the minivan and sobbed.
She had made the varsity tennis team, not just as a freshman but as a 15-year-old who really had only held a racket in earnest for about six months.
Li’l Diva’s coach just told her she needed to be in uniform and ready to play in the next day’s match. And in the one on Monday. This Monday. As is today.
The Li’l Diva in her orange and black best, ready to hit the courts.
Spring training came early for my little baseball player.
By “early,” I mean a few days before Halloween when he started a two-month clinic at a local sports academy. Not sure what I mean by “little.” Excitable is nearly 5-foot-6 and has mistakenly played in my Size 11 cleats before.
He’s following my footsteps in another way. He’s going to be a Little League catcher.
The clickity-tickity-tick of thousands of needles fighting unsuccessfully to stab through the shingled roof over my head woke me around six this morning.
Half-blinded by unfulfilled REMs while blinded the rest of the way by the nearsightedness I’ve been cursed with since childhood, I groped the nightstand for my glasses before stretching over to reach the window shade.
Even in my bleariness, I clearly recognize winter’s last big ”eff you.”
My father did not bury bodies for the mob. It only looked that way, every spring and summer, based on the contents of the trunk of his sedan.
Shovels. Pick. Soil rake. Gloves. Pull-over galoshes. A thick, crusty layer of dried mud everywhere.
The only DNA a forensics team would recover, though, would be from dad's sweat, blood and popped blisters.
These tools were not of his accounting trade. They were the ones that helped keep me and my teammates playing on the poorly draining baseball infields of my youth.
I don't carry these implements today, even though the minivan I drive could house half a Home Depot. This is because we have a storage shed full of tools and more at our Little League field. My fellow baseball parents and I used them often all this usually cold then usually rainy then usually hot season.
The dismissal of Rutgers University basketball coach Mike Rice for using gay slurs and firing balls at his players, among other acts of stupidity, started me thinking about the coaches I had while growing up. None I can recall even remotely approached Rice’s level of old-school intimidation techniques though my teammates and I undoubtedly tempted a few of them with our mediocrity.
Take poor Mickey Lione Jr., for example. Lione, one of the most successful and respected coaches in Connecticut let alone his hometown of Stamford, had the misfortune of coaching me on two of his few exceptionally unexceptional high school baseball teams. Our two squads compiled losing records versus the other city high schools, in the county conference and, obviously, overall.
My contribution that first season was that I never played an inning. As the backup to our one bright spot, an all-county catcher named Tony Romeo, I spent the entire spring in the bullpen warming up our perpetually in-demand relief pitchers.
Given how low my beloved and beleaguered Mets are predicted to finish this year, the ballpark was not very crowded for Opening Day even though it was allegedly a sellout. As proof, I submit that this was the first and only line I encountered all day at the park.
The bulging cooler, the teeny rusted camping grill, and four cobweb-encrusted folding chairs will be loaded into the back of the minivan. The kids, still rubbing the sleep from their eyes even after a school-less morning in, will climb into the middle seat. My Love will ride shotgun.
We’ll ease out of the driveway and go over the checklist.
Tickets?
Wallets?
Extra layers to fight the inevitable stinging winds?
We’ll have them all.
We’ll just have rolled to a stop at our neighborhood’s edge when My Love will ask, as she tends to do when we’re in hurry to get somewhere, “Did you close the garage door?”
Of course I did. I closed it this time as I did a million or so times before. It’s an automatic.
So automatic that I won’t actually remember reaching up and pushing the button next to the visor.
So automatic that I won’t really recall seeing the door shuttle down and seal itself against the concrete threshold.
“Dang you, woman,” I’ll say and slam on the brakes and then into reverse.
The type of hangover depends completely on how the Mets fare today — Opening Day of baseball season 2012.
If they win, it’ll be that giddy, just-fell-in-love kind of light-headedness.
If they lose, it’ll be your typical one of misery, regret and heartache. The kind we Mets fans are likely to become accustomed to game after game this year.
Sports prognosticators almost universally have picked my Mets to finish dead last in 2012. And not in an endearingly inept manner, as their inaugural team of has-beens and never-would-bes were 50 years ago under the guidance of the legendary Casey Stengel, who was known to nod off in the dugout. No – they are expected to land in the cellar with the loud, ugly thud of sub-mediocrity.
So, Ye Baseball Gods above, today we supporters of the Orange and Blue pray …
Thing 2’s Little League team started the season 0-8 this spring and the only bright side to that is that I’m not to blame.
You can look it up. My name is nowhere on the official league coaching roster.
I put in for the job but, as seems to be the case every year with our Little League, the folks on charge passed on me. They obviously aren’t aware of my work in the dreaded local youth soccer league where I have proven my obvious talents for coaching youngsters, a deep respect for authority and, most importantly, my patience to tolerate the little nosepickers week after week.
Instead I’m one of those dads. You know, the fun and helpful ones trying to relive their childhoods. I show up at practice in my old softball cleats, wad of top-shelf Bazooka in my cheek and a load of ultracheap Dubble Bubble in my pockets for the kids. I pitch batting practice, shag flies and try to impart wisdom about the finer points of the game like everyone lining up in parallel lines to play catch so an errant throws doesn’t clock one of your teammates in the back of the head.
I also try passing on the wisdom learned from my many years of playing ball. However, since I spent most of my time in high school warming up pitchers in the bullpen, I’m pretty much out of material once I explain the importance of a proper fitting protective cup.
I did prepare just in case I made a leap to the bigs this season. Over the winter, I bought a few instructional videos in which Hall of Fame infielder Cal Ripken Jr. and his less talented but far more entertaining goofy little brother Billy pass on “The Ripken Way” of playing the game. It’s good stuff. They explaining basic skills and drills, breaking everything into digestible nuggets and what kid doesn’t love nuggets?
One principle they teach in hitting is the need for the batter to shift his weight get more power into his swing. The best way to do this is for the batter to bring his hands back a bit before swinging to gather his energy and strength, as they note, like a cobra that is about to strike recoils before attacking.
I’ve been thinking about that mantra a lot lately, but it has nothing to do with baseball.
I spent this past Wednesday driving 70 minutes each way to the children’s hospital with Thing 1 asleep in the backseat most of the way. In between her snoring and my skipping back and forth across the tracks of a Stone Temple Pilots compilation CD I made 10 years ago, we visited our local specialist to update him on her juvenile myositis flare.
While the rash on her body looks better, Thing 1’s neck and trunk muscles have grown weaker in the past few weeks even with all the IV steroids and other meds coursing through her veins. She’s not falling over when sits on the couch, like she did at her worst at the tender age of 33 months but she’s not quite the spunky tween I knew only three months before.
“Go back to go forward,” Cal Ripken Jr. said into my left ear.
Through all that Thing 1 has gone through since this relapse two months ago, the news of weekly injections was the first to bring on a full-fledged meltdown.
“No no no no,” she cried, bawling into a pillow on the couch. “I don’t want shots. No no no no no. Don’t make me get shots again.”
“It’s only for a little while, sweetie, it’s to make you better so we can get you off all these other medications.”
“No no no no,” she wept, refusing to pull her face out of the cushion. “No more shots, Daddy.”
Thing 2, like any little brother, is normally his big sister’s mortal enemy. But there he sat on the lounger across the room, his lips curling and eyes welling. Then he ran into the kitchen and offered to his sister the Whoopie Pie dessert he had been hoarding.
He even offered to take some of the shots for her. I think he would if he could, at least until he saw the uncapped 27.5 gauge needle in my hand.
“Go back to go forward,” Billy Ripken said into my right ear.
I wish I could go back, even if it was just to two months ago. We wouldn’t need to go forward after that. We could just stop time and live forever in the moment.
# # #
DONOR TO MATCH YOUR CURE JM GIFT DOLLAR FOR DOLLAR
If you haven’t donated to help Cure JM Foundation put an end to this disease that Thing 1 can’t seem to shake, then I have good news.
A special donor has come forward with an offer to match every dollar our family raises between now and race day (June 25), up to a total of $3,000.
So your $3,000 plus the donor’s $3,000 would put us just shy of the $20,000 fundraising goal our family has set for this year.
Baseball is as much a game of history as it is of skill. That's why I'm putting Thing 2’s recently retired first mitt in our safe deposit box.
Not that I think Cooperstown will come calling for it. The boy has a fairly live pitching arm for a third grader, but in our Wiffle ball matches he's already displaying serious issues hitting the hard inside breaking stuff and the 23-foot-high moon ball.
I want to lock up his mitt for a selfish reason: I wish I still had my first ball glove.
That long-gone relic had been given to me the spring I turned 7. My mom passed it to me from a friend whose own child had graduated from wanting to learn to turn the perfect double play to wanting to teach how to turn the perfect pirouette.
Yes, my first mitt was a hand-me-down from a ballet teacher.
Specifically, my sister's ballet teacher.
I had recently followed the light to the Church of Baseball so this was quite the baptismal gift. I accepted it without hesitation, too excited to worry that the cowhide might be a carrier of girl cooties. As a quick study of the game, I was prepared should anyone peer under the wrist strap to discover the name of my glove's original owner. I would say that if Shoeless Joe Jackson could hit .400 with a bat named "Black Betsy" then I could win a Gold Glove with a mitt called "Sheila W."
Most people wouldn't bother with my mitt anyway. The lining of the ring finger turned slightly inside out, causing borrowers to complain about the awkward fit. To me, though, it felt just fine.
We spent many hours together that year. Catching sky-scraping flies my dad threw until his shoulder ached. Snaring imaginary line drives as I lay on the playroom floor listening to Bob Murphy describe the play of another pitiful Mets team. Snagging tennis balls off the wall in my parent’s basement, which today still bears a strike zone I fashioned from masking tape.
Spring turned to summer, summer to autumn. The air turned crisp and others turned to football, but I stayed in my backyard, single-handedly catching all 27 outs to win another imaginary World Series until I was called in for lunch. I dropped my mitt next to the tree serving as the Green Monster and went inside.
That was the last I saw of it.
When I returned 20 or 30 minutes later, ball and glove had vanished.
Since we lived in a town where zoning and woods hamper most contact with civilization, my first thought that desperados, hell bent for third-hand leather, rode though and swiped it while I downed a grilled cheese didn't register. My parents concluded that a never-before- and never-since-seen dog wandered through and took it home as a chew toy. As I grew older, I started suspecting convenient scapegoating to counter an early request I made to Santa for a puppy.
Instead, for Christmas I received another glove and it was good, serving me through Tiny League and my first year in Little League. That one is gone, too, though I suspect it fell as a silent and unmourned victim during a zealous spring cleaning.
Also gone are the baseballs from my only two home runs in organized ball and the one from the night I went 5-for-5 with the game-winning RBI single in a 13-year-old All-Star game. Someone broke into my parents' house several years ago and stole those, along with some of my mom’s costume jewelry, and some other odd items of relatively little value.
Maybe it was not someone. Maybe it was something.
Maybe the same mysterious hellhound who visited our backyard years before made a return visit. Who knows? I just hope those old baseballs and memories eventually found their way to the comforting leather pocket of my old reliable Sheila W.
A bit of the magic went out of Opening Day last week when we had to place Thing 1 on the disabled list.
She woke at 3 a.m., crying and moaning. Fever. Headache. Pain in the pee department and up into the plumbing.
It’s no fun having a urinary track infection as an adult, so I’m sure it was worse for an 11-year-old girl. But there are worse and more embarrassing reasons to go on the DL. Just ask former Mets flop Kaz Matsui, whose “injury” may or may not have given a double meaning to his being a switch hitter.
No whining that he was bored or that he wanted to go home.
Shut off which ever of the 67 different Pokémon games he has for his Nintendo DS the first time I asked while we waited for lunch, then put it away and never brought it out again until the ride home many hours later after the game finished and we toured the gift shops and Mets Hall of Fame exhibit. (Yeah, yeah -- it was a pretty small exhibit.)
As we sat watching the rather lackluster play of the Mets, he listened politely as I prattled on about the no-doubles infield defense and seemed genuinely interested as I demonstrated how to make a rally cap when his team stood four runs down in the ninth.
“Dude, we need more than rally caps,” I said to him as our home team batters continued to flail meekly at the Washington Nationals’ pitches. “You need to conjure up all the special Pokémon powers you can to make the Mets score some runs and get them a victory!”
“Dad,” he said back without missing a beat, “I don’t think there’s ANY power for that.”
The “Always Home and Uncool” offices will be closed today for its annual rite of spring – Opening Day of baseball season.
(Technically the season opened 8 days ago, but not at the home field for my beloved and, as usual, beleaguered, New York Mets. I’m all about location, people.)
This will mark my 17th Major League home opener: 8 for the Mets, 7 for the Texas Rangers when we were cast out in the bland Dallas suburbs by corporate America, 1 for the Baltimore Orioles in college (Joan Jett sang the National Anthem, the original President Bush tossed out the first pitch then helicoptered the heck out of there because, hey, Charm City is no Kennebunkport, Mumsy) and 1 – bleech – for the Yankees.
I say that not just because the Yankees are the “ic” in America (greed, sense of entitlement, pinstriped business attire in a park setting and – the real kick in pants – $11 beer) but because, hands down, it was the worst time I’ve ever had at a baseball game. Ever.
The year: 1991. Some friends from the newspaper I worked at asked me to the game, which was great because I had never been to the legendary Yankee Stadium and, hey – it was Opening Day!
It was also 38 degrees and damp with a wind that brought what felt like a thousand razor cuts with every gust as we sat with our feet soaking in the puddles in the upper right field deck.
I missed the top half of the first (and a Robin Ventura home run) waiting in line at the concession for nonexistent hot dogs.
Well, they existed before I got there. Specifically five people before I got there.
Yes, the Yankees – this richest, most fabled sports franchise in baseball – if not all sports – ran out of hot dogs.
On Opening Day.
In the FIRST FREAKIN’ INNING.
(To be fair, this was not the glory days of the Steinbrenner Era. Even if you don’t know a baseball from an avocado, this will give you all you need to know: your manager is named “Stump” and though everyone calls your starting left fielder “Bam Bam," his full name is the less than intimidating Hensley Filemon Acasio Meulens.)
In the third inning I waited in line for coffee. That ran out in the previous inning. Meanwhile, I missed the Yanks rally for 4 runs.
I finally gave up on hot food or beverage and opted for beer. I took it back to my seat and, three sips in, accidentally kicked it over. Luckily, the people in front of us didn’t notice because they had come properly dressed for day in blankets and garbage bags.
Today it will be better.
Today the sun is expected to peek out from behind its winter covers over Flushing, Queens, and show us its its unkempt bed head.
Today whatever they use for mercury these days might reach the mid-50s.
Today I’ll hurry the Things out of school early and into the minivan so we can sit in traffic on the Whitestone Bridge.
Today My Love will again try to teach Thing 1 how to keep score and I’ll try to teach Thing 2 that there is more to going to the ballpark than sucking down tortilla chips covered in glowing orange glop. Undoubtedly, I'll fail again but I won’t care until tomorrow morning.
Because today …
TODAY Today you'll dig in the closet for your glove and snap a ball into it while sipping your morning coffee. Today as the toast comes out of the toaster, you'll still remember how to execute a perfect "pop-up" slide. Today you'll drive to work and admonish yourself to "keep your head down" and your eye on the road. Today your team will be in first and planning to stay there. Today you'll end your contract holdout. Today you'll still be able to turn the double play. Today you won't lose a business deal in the sun. Today you'll find yourself rotating your arm around your head to stretch the shoulder and keep it loose. Today someone asks if you'll be at the meeting and you respond by saying, "Let's play two." Today you spend an hour in the attic with old baseball cards and dusty Sports Illustrateds. Today sunflower seeds strangely find their way into your back pocket. Today you find yourself muttering something about "Bill freakin' Buckner." Today you'll think of wearing a black suit to match the eye black. Today you'll have the steal sign. Today you slip up in a meeting and mention "our sales team ... vs. lefties." Today a hot dog and peanuts for lunch will sound about right. Today you tell a co-worker to "warm up." Today the only strike you'll know about is above the knees and below the armpits. Today you'll wear your jacket only on your pitching arm. Today you'll buy two packs of gum and stuff them in the side of your mouth. Today, during lunch, you'll wonder why Coke doesn't come in a wood can. Today you'll scratch yourself and spit for no apparent reason. Today you'll wonder why stirrup socks never caught on. Today you'll be the rookie looking to make it big. Today you'll be the wily vet with just a little something left. Today you'll look for the AM dial on your radio. Today your glove is hanging off the handlebars of your bike. Today seems like a good day for an ice cream before you head home. Today is box scores and "Baseball Tonight." Today is Donnie Sadler and Keith Osik. Today is Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds. Today your first coach is cheering. Still. Today mom's watching. Today dad's in the backyard -- with his glove. Today it'll still be a kids' game. Today you'll be a kid. Today is Opening Day.
BTW, if you like talkin’ baseball (or just listening to two guys babble in-depth about it), check out “Just Talking to the Cornfield” with my pal B.E. Earl on Sunday night. Sybil Law will be there with booze and gratuitous Dave Grohl photos.
I know I’m two days late for my final mustache showing of Movember but both cords we have for downloading our digital cameras mysteriously disappeared.
So I bought a new camera.
I had to. Mine was tragically smacked out my hand by an 8-year-old (not named Thing 2) at a birthday party in May, and it had been shooting with a wonky focus ever since. That’s why I’ve been looking so Cybill Shepherd in Moonlighting-ish of late.
So without further ado, here is my Day 30 ‘stache, in which I channel my inner Keith Hernandez.
Why Keith?
Because Keith is a one-time Most Valuable Player and 11-time Gold Glove winning first baseman.
Because Keith is a spokesman for Just for Men Mustache and Beard dye gel which, I admit, I had to use not so much to hide the gray but to darken the blonde so people could tell I was growing something under my nose.
Because Keith, while broadcasting a Mets game this year, reflected the feelings of all the team’s fans by falling asleep during the “action”:
God save you and your mustache, Keith.
And God save those of you who contributed to me and Team DadCentric, to help us raise more than $1,300 to fight prostate and testicular cancer.
As for those of you who didn’t donate this time out, I’m sure you were saving up to make a HUGE contribution this spring when I ask for you to support Cure JM in the Seattle Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon/Half Marathon in June.
Now back to our regularly scheduled, unfuzzy and Uncool face:
Take poor 
We’ll ease out of the driveway and go over the checklist. 
