Caught out

Especially for Esquire, an essay on baseball, by Richard Ford

“oh, joe, you never heard such cheering,” Marilyn is famously reported to have swooned to DiMaggio, on returning from Korea. To which The Clipper, a man of few words, is said to have replied, understatedly, “Yes I have.”

We’d all like that, right? To be cheered, adored, applauded, patted stupid on our backs for this or for that. For saving the crippled girl from the burning building; for giving the inspirational speech that changed everything at the annual convention. And for some sports wizardry for sure (especially if you’re me and never really experienced such a thing). For one-handing the SLD (screaming line drive) that broke up the late-inning rally in the play-offs; for running through the outfield wall to rob the Bears of the winning four-bagger, thereby claiming the title; for clearing the bar at 18ft — when no one knew I had a broken tibia. On and on — and on and on. Nothing’s enough, really.

My own trophy case is all but empty — only two fading frames making up my bestilled highlight reel. Once at age approximately eight, in pee-wee football, I actually caught a breakaway runner from behind as he “streaked” toward the goal line — a miracle even to me now, given how clod-footed I was (and am). I don’t remember what anyone said about it at the time.

Second — but really first — I once actually did bare-hand an SLD, ripped off the bat of legendary Cubs’ second baseman Ryne Sandberg, while I was seated in the first-base boxes at Wrigley Field, Chicago. My wife was there and can testify. It was the summer of 1986. I’d just published a well-regarded novel. The spectators all around me actually did stand up and applauded, cried huzzahs, as my hand quickly swelled toward twice its size and I began looking around for medical attention.

That’s been it, though. The rest is pretty much a life-long series of humiliations and disheartenings. Hard to choose among them, really; hard to know which one’s worst. There was the time at age about nine when I “won” the breaststroke competition at the YMCA championships, but had forgotten and swum the butterfly. There was the time at age 48 when I decided to “warm up” without safety glasses on the squash court with some English twit I’d never played before and got hit (by him) in the eye with the ball, smashing my retina. There was the time at age 15 when I missed basketball practice over the Christmas holidays and came back to school to learn I’d been dropped from the team without notice. When I asked “coach Mac” (I do not wish him well, wherever he is) why I’d been booted, he just sucked his tooth, smirked, looked around to see who was listening (this was in Mississippi) and said, “Well, tell ya the truth, Ford, I was afraid I might actually have to play you.”

I was dropped from my Babe Ruth League baseball team in my third year — when no one ever got dropped. Later, I was perfunctorily reinstated when another boy quit, though I never got over the shame. On the same high school basketball team from which I was later bounced, I was early-on and scaldingly nicknamed “The Oaf”, because it was observed that my only real hard-court talent was to injure opposing players.

All bad experiences, of course, are not public. Many are endured with no audience participation. Once, standing in the gym in high school, I recognised the legendary University of Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant entering discreetly through a side door, and being introduced to one of my classmates— a slashing AllAmerican running back, whom the Bear was hoping to recruit. What if, I thought… what if the old Bear happened to see me there standing idly across the gym, as feckless as a goat, and just decide on the spot, “I’ll just take that kid, too, while I’m here. He looks tough as nails to me.” This even though I’d never played a down of high school football and had not long before, as previously explained, been kicked off the basketball squad.

And some injuries, of course, are simply self-inflicted, wounds of vanity and improvidence. To one of my university chums, I lied about having been a star on (you guessed it) my high school basketball team, only to have him, long before the Google days, root around and find me mysteriously absent from the team picture. He never spoke another word to me after that. He’s dead now.

The worst degradation (we’ll say) — the one my wife relishes and frequently encourages me to tell when I’m drunk — involves my miserable, error-strewn, no-hit, no-throw baseball career. I’m left-handed, though I actually think of myself as ambidextrous — which is perhaps overstating it. But in my 10th-grade high school year, I decided to “try out” for baseball. And because the long history of playing first base is peopled with splendid lefties (Lou Gehrig, Willie McCovey, Stan Musial), I chose first as “my position”. Unfortunately for me, standard infield practice requires “fielding” ground balls hit by a coach to the second, shortstop and third base players, who then rocket the ball to first (my base) whereupon the first baseman is tasked to catch these throws, wheel smartly to his left and fire the same ball to the catcher at home plate. To most first basemen, this catch-wheel-throw business is a total no-brainer, involving motions so fluid and automatic that each throw whops the catcher’s mitt without anyone even having to look. My throws, however, did not go whop. If I once fielded the infielder’s throw cleanly (never a sure thing), my own throw home was almost always bizarrely wide or bizarrely high or just pitifully into the dirt, making a clean play for the catcher an infuriating nightmare — at best.

Much toilsome time was being expended by coach Charles Rugg, explaining to me how easy this routine was or ought to be, then acting grumpily mystified by my repeated failures to perform it. We were only practising, it’s true. But such inexpertise clearly didn’t foretell success under game conditions (which, of course, would never come to pass for me). At the end of his patience, coach Rugg, who was a tall, handsome, rather dashing, black-haired redneck from some abysmal Mississippi backwater, strolled up to me and said, “Gimme your glove, Ford. I see your problem right here. You think you’re lefthanded. But I know you’re right-handed. You need a right-hander’s glove. I’ve got one for you right here. Put it on.”

I did not want to put it on. I might’ve been ambidextrous in my fantasy life, but I could not throw a baseball with my right hand any better than could a six-year-old girl. All the other try-outs were gathered round, snickering, cringing and muttering — hoping my sorry fate would never be theirs. Which it would not. I became crimson-faced, fuming. Mortified. Which did not make my spasmo righthanded throws go any better, nor my baroque efforts to catch with my “off” left hand work out very well at all. Left-handed I could both catch and throw — if not well. Right-handed, I could barely do either — only worse.

It was one of those moments. An instant in your life when no one tells you anything; when no one says to you, “Son, you should go home now and not come back out here again. You’re no good at this.” But somehow you know. That silence is the world telling you. At the end of that hot afternoon’s practice, I took my lefty glove and my cleated shoes and my wool baseball cap and my baseball, and I went home to my parents. It marked the end of my brief, cheerless baseball career.