Call it blasphemy, but sometimes the game just ain’t that important. I recently returned from a friend’s wedding in Washington (important) to play a game with my new girlfriend in the stands (important). I reported in to our pitcher, Joe, that I had finally been reunited with my drum set, and Joe, who plays bass in a blues band, invited me to his next gig (okay, not important, but fun).

We had a lackadaisical game, and it occurred to me that Joe was being roundly cheated by the softball gods. He was pitching well, not walking anyone, and being bled to death by Texas Leaguers. He was also getting grounders, but no one in our infield ever dives after anything. I managed to spare Joe an additional Texas Leaguer with a sliding catch, and had some hope that my grass stains might provide some inspiration to my earth-bound mates.

After our rather inevitable loss, we were packing up when someone came rushing back to the dugout in search of Tommy’s car keys. “Joe’s had a… I don’t know what he’s had,” he blurted, and ran back to the parking lot.

When we got to the cars, Joe was leaning against his brother, Tommy’s truck as Basim, our resident cop, shone a light in his eye and asked him questions. A minute later, we had a fire engine and two ambulances, and Joe was off to the hospital.

Word got back to us later that Joe had a “mini-stroke,” was staying at the hospital for further tests, but recuperating nicely. (Important).

Birthday Notes
My old man used to play fast-pitch (which is partly responsible for his shoulder problems) and we got to wondering one day where exactly our sport of choice got started. A little Internet investigation – landing on an article at www.paracletehs.org – revealed a story that is eminently quirky. Let me venture a little summing-up.

Thanksgiving, 1887: Twenty men have gathered at Chicago’s Farragut Boat Club to hear the results of the Harvard-Yale football game. After Yale’s victory – and the paying off of various bets – somebody picks up a stray boxing glove and hurls it at somebody else, who just happens to have a pole in his hands, and gives it a whack.

A guy named George Hancock notices the goings-on and ties a boxing glove into a ball, chalks out a diamond on the gym floor, and breaks off a broomstick for a bat. The resultant game produces a 41-40 score (something like a present-day company-league game), and Hancock catches the fever.

The next week he creates an oversize ball and a thin, rubber-tipped bat, paints the gym floor with a permanent diamond and proclaims the new sport “indoor baseball.” The sport proves so popular in Chicago’s snowy winter climate that, come spring, it heads outside, in a variation called “indoor-outdoor.”

In 1895, a Minneapolis fire department officer named Lewis Rober, Sr. needed an activity to keep his men in shape, and, with no apparent knowledge of Hancock’s Chicago sport, designed a similar miniaturized baseball for the small vacant lot next to the firehouse. The name of Rober’s team in subsequent league play was the Kittens, so this game was referred to as “kitten ball.”

Makes “softball” sound downright manly, eh?

Among the few pieces of contact allowed in the game, my favorite is the second-base takeout on a double-play turn. Basically, you’re allowed to put down a clean, hard slide into the base (as long as you can touch the base), and it’s the infielder’s job to get off the base as quickly as possible. As a shortstop for fifteen years, I used to prefer when the runner tried to take me out, because it was far better than all these bozos who came in standing up, either losing the play at first or giving this idiot a frontal lobotomy with a fastball to the forehead. (As my shortstop pal Doug, says, the latter just ain’t worth the life-long guilt). I used to actually compliment runners who tried to take me out.

A few weeks ago, we played a team that had exactly one power hitter – but what a power hitter. We kept backing up in the outfield, and he kept hitting it over our heads regardless, three times straight. Sluggo also played shortstop, but just didn’t look the part. One of my teammates said that he played in the home run leagues, where the infield got very little action.
A few innings later, I’m standing on first and thinking, I’m going in hard on this guy. Sure enough, the batter hit one to the second baseman. Sluggo received the ball at the bag and was standing there like he owned the place – till I came in with a late slide, disrupting any chance he might have had to relay it to first.
“Hey, take it easy, man,” said Sluggo. “You’re going to break a leg out here. We all have to go to work in the morning.”
“Yeah, we do,” I said. “And that’s my base. Get off of it.”
We finally got smart and walked Sluggo intentionally in the final inning, then batted in the bottom of the inning and came from behind to win. And who knows? Maybe my little escapade put a little shake into their defense. All I know is, I’m not about to take it easy on some guy who hits three home runs on us.
So yeah, I was a jerk – but I was also right.

Michael J. Vaughn is the author of several novels, available at amazon.com. Home page: geocities.com/michaeljvaughn.