Nineteen-thirty-two. That is the year that Babe Ruth invented it. Baseball. It was 1932.
Right now the sports-challenged among you are Googling "whoinventedbaseball.com" just to prove me wrong so you can send me a smarty-pants email which will read something like: "Bill, you big dummy! Babe Ruth didn't invent baseball. It was Abner Doubleday that invented baseball." And I'll email you back and correct your incredibly bad English and go on to demonstrate my encyclopedic knowledge of the game.
Then, being the dilettante that I am, I will conclude with infallible validation by stating, "He did too."
So now that we have incontrovertibly established the fact that the Babe indeed invented baseball in 1932 (before that a lot of guys in really bad uniforms, terrible haircuts, funny mustaches and even funnier names--Ty, Cy and Honus, etc.--played a form of stickball that was slightly more organized than after-school street games), you are probably asking yourself "What the heck is Bill doing, writing about sports? Isn't sports, which includes facts, statistics, and intelligent comment, way out of his league? Shouldn't serious sports stuff be covered by serious sports guys like Wally Hall?"
And you would be right. But sometimes even the likes of Wally Hall need to have a little competition. I'll bet you a warm beer and cold hot dog at Dickey-Stephens Park this summer that if you email him and ask if Abner Doubleday invented baseball, that he will reply that Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball. Go ahead.
Leo, Barney and I were in Leo's man-cave last summer yawning our way through yet another Cardinals game when, in a rare moment of lucidity, Barney came up with the bright idea that the three of us should actually do something athletic. I asked him, "Like what?" He finished his beer, looked at me with a nearly focused expression and said, "Go to an actual baseball game. Instead of just sitting around here in Leo's man-cave drinking beer and yelling at the players we should get off our butts and go to an actual game where we can sit around and drink beer and yell at the players."
After the inning was over (we never talk during play but focus on our yelling at the players) I suggested that we go one better. That we really do something athletic and actually join a team. Joanne's boss down at the discount auto-parts store was getting up a team for the city summer league and he was recruiting players.
We discussed a few lame concerns: Leo hadn't swung a bat since high school (except for that nasty incident with his neighbor a few years ago--she won), and Barney hadn't thrown a ball since he blew $87 at the Arkansas State Fair trying to win a tattered $2 teddy for his wife Barbie (she actually had wanted a teddy bear, but they ran out). And me--I hadn't had a plug of tobacco in my cheek since grade school when Sister Mary Magdalene caught me with it at lunch and forced me swallow it with a mouthful of gub'ment cheese.
Undaunted, we drove out to the practice field the next week to sign up. The coach, Joanne's boss, had a special black t-shirt screen-printed just for him that had COACH printed on the back. He also had a special black t-shirt screen-printed just for him at work that had BOSS printed on the back. He was a bit reluctant to add us to the roster. He had already bought special black t-shirts for the team that had PLAYER screen-printed on the back so he could use them year after year and didn't have any that would accommodate our ... err ... girth.
He finally relented since he only had five players signed up and said that we could wear our black AC/DC 1976 "Dirty Deeds Tour" t-shirts.
After two weeks of practice, the BOSS held tryouts. The screen-printing place misspelled COACH. Some wise guy there used an "R." Since there were only eight of us on the team, I'm not sure what the heck tryouts were for, but you don't argue with someone who wears a black 44 XXL t-shirt with the word BOSS written on the back.
It was probably because all of the other players on our team were, like ... half our age and could actually throw the ball overhand that they got all of the infield positions. We were banished to the outfield behind some ball-hog rover. Barney in left, Leo right.
Me--I played center. I know it sounds easy. After all, not that many balls are hit to the deep outfield in 16-inch slow-pitch mush ball, but when the occasional power hitter would step up to the plate and actually launch one, you have no idea how physically challenging it can be to throw it all the way back in underhanded.
At the end of the season last year we came in 13th. There were 14 teams. After our last game, we were congratulating ourselves with high-fives and cold beers. It was then that we broke the sad news to our teammates that the three of us were not going to be returning.
Leo, Barney and I decided that somehow the gals would have to get along without us. This season we are going to play on a men's team.
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Bill Rausch is a freelance writer from Little Rock. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 05/23/2014