TEAM LAST CALL

It’s baseball season once again, that special time of year when young, Major League hopefuls gather on the little league diamond to fine-tune their swings, practice their fielding skills, and give long, painful wedgies to kids like me.

I was something of a hot-shot on my midget league baseball team. I don’t like to brag, but the truth is, I actually managed to get a hit each of the three seasons I played, except for the first two seasons. That works out to one base hit in just three seasons of play, which is really, really good, provided you are either 3 years old or don’t have any arms.

It’s a longstanding tradition in baseball to give affectionate nicknames to the game’s top players (“Joltin’” Joe DiMaggio, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, “Incontinent” Elmer Merkle, “Barry” Bonds).

Something similar happened to me in midget league ball, except my nicknames were more along the lines of “The Fat Kid,” “That Fat Kid Who Always Strikes Out,” and “Fatty McStrikeout.”

Part of the reason why I struck out so much was that I was afraid of getting hit by the ball, and the reason for that is because I got hit by the ball all the time. My gigantic head had some sort of gravitational pull that drew the baseball towards it like a magnet. “Plunk!” went the ball off of my helmet.

“Plunk!” “Plunk!” “Plunk!”

“Oomph!” I said. “Oweee!” “Zimmmaaah!” “Gack!”

The reward for getting hit in the head with a baseball is that you get to go stand on first base as if you actually got a hit, which is all well and good until the next guy gets a hit, in which case you have to run around the bases.

Because, as the first half of “Fatty McStrikeout” implies, speed wasn’t really my forte. I would take off for second base, desperately holding up my husky pants by the belt loop and panting like an asthmatic piglet.

Meanwhile, the second baseman caught the ball, tagged the base, went home, did his homework, graduated, got married, and had a son of his own who joined the team and was waiting at the bag to make fun of me when I finally got there.

“You’re out, fatty,” he’d say.

“Shut up, Joey Junior!” I’d say.

I played right field, which is a very key position on a baseball team – the cornerstone of the defense, if you will. Or at least, that’s what my mom said. Of course, she also said the coach made me ninth in the batting order because he was “saving the best for last.”

“I couldn’t hit those pitches either,” my mom offered in her endless attempts to cheer me up. “And it’s just baby fat. You’ll grow out of it,” she added. Last week.

But the truth is that right field is reserved for people with the athletic prowess of an earthworm. You could put a drunk cat with four broken legs into right field and still win the game. Nobody ever hits the ball into right field. I spent most of my time singing Christmas carols to myself and popping the heads off of dandelions. “Oh, holy night!” Pop. “The stars are brightly shiiiiiiiining!” Pop. Pop.

Eventually, I’d notice that everybody from my team had walked off the field, usually when some overweight kid with glasses from the other team showed up beside me with his finger up his nose and a big mustard stain on his shirt.

“What a loser!” I’d think to myself as I stood up to find my glove, fasten the safety pin holding up my pants, adjust the corrective inserts in my shoes, tape my sunglasses back together, wipe the dog crap off my hat, and waddle over to our bench to join the rest of the team for the between-innings pep talk. “Remember,” our coach would say, “a team is only as good as its weakest player. Incidentally, it’s your turn to bat, Fats.”

It’s one, two, three strikes, I’m out at the old ball game. It’s not like I wouldn’t try to hit the ball. I swung all the time, but usually in self-defense.

My big base hit happened when, as a 70 mph fastball gravitated towards my head, I closed my eyes and did a big tomahawk chop with the bat – and I actually made contact. The ball dribbled down the third base line and, much to everyone’s surprise, I was soon standing on first base with my first bona fide hit.

Why I thought it would be a good idea to try to steal second base is anyone’s guess. I chalk it up to temporary insanity. By the time I was halfway down the base path, the game was called because of darkness. Fortunately, play was resumed the next afternoon just in time for me to slide into the bag and get tagged out.

But I was not discouraged. I had become a new kind of ball player – the kind that got hits. I had the eye of the tiger. I stepped up to the plate for my next at-bat with full confidence. I was prepared for greatness. As the pitcher went into his wind-up, I pointed at the fence with my bat. This was the day that I would become a man. This was my moment to shine.

I dug in my heels. I began my swing. I gasped in horror as the ball curved in towards my head.

“Plunk!”