View Single Post
Old January 20th, 2014 #59
Alex Linder
Administrator
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 45,756
Blog Entries: 34
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Donnie in Ohio View Post
Jesus, what a prick. Probably thought he was teaching you a life lesson about "no I in TEAM" banality.
I have seriously spend more hours trying to gauge the reason for his attitudes than was really necessary or useful. He was one of those hard types, who never gave much evidence of liking anyone, but it just seemed he had a little less even of that for me, even though I never talked back to him, not even once, and did everything he wanted. I treated it as a team, which it was, not a joke or walk in the park. My teammates, unknown to me until much later, nicknamed me Mad Swede, apparently thinking my name is Swedish. Baseball players aren't intellectuals, that stereotype is true; even the ones who go on to becomes lawyers, as MOST of these guys eventually did.

Re the HR attempt - I happened to mention my little plan to our starting catcher, a good guy named Spinnetta. So he started his whole Peter Popoff routine, "listen to Linder," blah blah blah, laughing hiss ass off cause he knew it was out of character (a), and (b) wasn't happening. So of course the coach just happens to overhear this... If someone in position of authority doesn't like you, all he needs is a pretext. I gave him one. I can blame only myself, really, although in my heart I thought it was pretty chickenshit. Now, it didn't help the team in the ensuing double-header to put in other guy, a particularly jewy jew who played right field behind me, but yes, I'm sure you're right. It was a free lesson in moral edification. I guess I could look at it like that, but let me tell you, playing a double-header on Saturday and sitting your ass on the bench really gets old, even coaching bases and chasing foul balls like a two-footed dog. He finally relented and stuck me in as baserunner in second game. People. The way they think. Who can figure it?

Nah, my glory days athletically peaked at 12. I was the big star player, shortstop, pitcher. I could throw strikes every time. When you're young, that makes the difference. Once kids grow, and I stayed small until I was nearly out of high school, simply throwing strikes isn't enough. I still remember when I knew I wasn't going pro. This guy named Steve Johnson got in. Threw him an inside strike, this is in So Cal in '70s, he hits it about fifty feet over the left-field fence, but ten yards foul. Next pitch, he hits over the right-center fence. Then I realized, damn, I need a curveball or a lot stronger arm. Neither of which was in the cards.

I will admit to hopes to going pro, as many kids have, but I have an uncle who made AAA, and was starting SS at ASU in the sixties, ASU being one of the top baseball programs. He was in the A's org, played for San Jose. But never made the majors, got injured, which at least kept him out of Vietnam. But he had a very different build than I do. Short, very strong, could walk fifty yards on his hands, according to my mom. Great fielder but light hitter.

Our shortstop was a marine type, ROTC, as well as a football player. He was a funny guy, good leader, along with our best player, Curtis. One time he had to go, so he let me play shortstop while he was gone. But only if I tried some dip. He was the distributor for that nasty shit. So I tried some. But unlike my Indian friend, I didn't get hooked on. That stuff is fucking nasty. Anyway, I played SS one game in college, went 3 for 5, and made no errors. But...it took every ounce of my being to make the out throw on an ordinary ground ball. What I realized was you have to be basically a genetic freak to have a strong enough arm to play infield in any kind of serious baseball. Almost no one has it, I certainly don't, I'm rag armed. I played right field - I see these guys in the majors make one hop throws to third base, or throw it all the way home, I couldn't do that in a million years. "A man's got to know his limitations." I could hit the ball up the middle and get on base about half the time. I hit the ball up the middle and got on base about half the time. I could stand in the outfield and catch 90% of normal flyballs. I stook in the outfield and caught normal flyballs. Hard-hit balls went by me or over me. I could throw the ball to the cut-off man on 2-3 bounces (as opposed to sailing it over his head in a wild attempt to duplicate something that only people with superior physical skills could do). I threw the ball on 2-3 bounces to the cutoff man. One does what one can, if one is wise.

Quote:
My baseball brush with fame was getting into a fairly serious collision at 1B with Paul O'Neill, who went on to play for the Reds and Yankees.
Ha...I bet he whined like a bitch, too. There was a great line from I think Joe Torre saying "I tried for years to make a man out of Paul O'Neill."

Quote:
Did you know that sliding into a base stems from racism?

Seems that a few blacks did indeed play on late 19th/early 20th century professional teams. One of them played SS, and the white players would "sacrifice being tagged out by pulling up short in a slide with which they
used their spikes to strike his shins".
Or something like that.

Which begged, at least to me, the question as to why players still slide into base today?
Except for they did that to other whites too. Black might be an additional reason, but you go back and read anything about baseball in 1880-1930, they were all about sharpening their spikes in the dugout, and coming in hard at the bases. These were tough men. They needed the money. It wasn't like today.

My favorite Cobb anecdote, and I remember the quote exactly. Cobb's at this banquet. And some catcher from a competing team is joking about how he didn't really tag Cobb on some plays at the plate. Cobb gets up an attacks him. "You stole runs from me. Runs that I earned!"

These media faggots all hate Cobb because he was 1) Southern, 2) sharp as a tack, 3) anti-nigger, 4) didn't take any shit from anybody, as opposed to being ingratiating or self-effacing, the way these mealy worms prefer. Only Babe Ruth is in the argument with him for the greatest player ever. Ruth is more American in that he's got the big extroverted larger-than-life persona and Rabelasian appetites people generally love in a public figure (see Rob Ford), and he proved he could pitch as well as hit, but in pure baseball terms, I think Cobb was the best player ever.

Last edited by Alex Linder; January 20th, 2014 at 05:48 PM.