Too Perfect

Found this excerpt from Wingshooters (page 81) on my desk this morning:

"But when I did connect, when the ball hit the center of the barrel of the bat and flew out into the field, I felt a sense of joy and freedom as powerful and true as anything I've ever experienced.  If you have never felt the resistance and connection of a bat hitting a baseball; if you have not heard the crack of the bat split an autumn afternoon; if you have not watched the ball sail through the open air and settle into the fresh-cut grass, you have missed one of life's purest feelings of achievement.  Hitting a ball is like catching a piece of the sky and sending it back up to itself.  It's like creating your own crack of thunder.  And stopping a ball -- especially a grounder you have to reach for, or a line drive that should have flown past  your glove -- is like catching a bolt of lightning."

How perfect is that paragraph huh?  If you have never played the game of baseball and don't understand or cannot relate to these words then trust me when I say this description is spot on, perfect.  I miss playing baseball and I miss playing as a kid in the fall with the crisp autumn air and stopping that line drive at third base or hitting the ball on the sweet spot.  I played ball from when I was about 6 years old until I was 18, then a few years in college, and one season when I was living in Florida at age 26.  I might not have been the greatest ballplayer but I never loved playing a sport as much as I did baseball.  I never understood a game better than I do baseball.  I cherish the history of the game and how it has evolved from the late 1800s up till the present day and get upset when these overpaid athletes cry, whine, complain, and gripe about not getting paid enough or not getting enough time in the field because I would give anything to play even for just one day in the major leagues.  I wish ballplayers of today had the heart and soul of the old timers that would pitch double headers, play in the rain, play for the love of the game and not the paycheck that was handed to them. 

Nowadays you can't get a pitcher to go a complete game and you can't get a guy off the D.L. unless his agent tells him it's ok to do so.  Back then they played because they all thought they were the best and they wanted to go out and prove it to everyone else.  They woulda played for peanuts if they had to; only to go out there on the last day of the season, take on a double header with an average of .399 (would have been rounded up) and not care about the stats but instead go out, risk it and go 6-8 and finish out the season with a .406 average.  You tell me which player today would play the last game of the season if he was hitting .400??  Nobody...only Ted Williams.

Some people say baseball's not a true sport because they're all too busy eating fried chicken, drinking beer and playing video games in the dugout.  To them I say try and hit a fastball, attempt a curveball, catch a line drive or even just a pop-up, steal a base, strategize about how to get runners home, pitch nine innings, try walking off the field after making an error or the most amazing play ever...then tell me you aren't playing a sport.

Some good Ted Williams quotes:

"A man has to have goals - for a day, for a lifetime - and that was mine, to have people say, 'There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived."

"Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel, not just to be as good as someone else but to be better than someone else. This is the nature of man and the name of the game."

"If I was being paid thirty-thousand dollars a year, the very least I could do was hit .400."