Stay Gold, Pony Ball
Or, "I pity the fool who don't like T-ball!"
written by B on August 9th, 2005

What you can't see is that I wrote "Cal Ripken Jr." in sharpie on the palm of my glove and told everybody that it'd been autographed.  In print.   Cursive was my great childhood enemy.  Not that I couldn't do it.  I could write beautifully in cursive.  But two things didn't make sense to me:

1.  Why if cursive is the "fast" way to write does it take me so much longer to do than printing, especially now that we've replaced the "Z" that Zorro makes with a fucking Pablo Picasso light pen drawing of a Heffalump, and

2.  We're in the first grade.  Just last year you taught us to write properly in print.  Now a year later you're demanding that we write in an entirely different script?  Why didn't you just teach us to write in cursive when we started?  And if we're going to have to "print name" on every possible form that matters to our life and we're using keyboards that type in print, why don't we just stick to print?   It's like the metric system.  Teach me about the metric system when I'm learning how to measure things and yeah, I'm okay with the metric system.  But if you teach me about my weight in pounds and then immediately tell me to forget pounds and count myself in "stone" I'm just going to associate it with how Nikita Koloff weighed himself as an evil Russian and thereby classify you too in the genus of chain-wielding pinko bastards.

Cal Ripken signed my glove in print and I was going to be the greatest shortstop in history.  I skipped a lot of the fundamentals.  I'm about as fast as molasses dripping off of Joe Crack's ass.  I had great hand-eye coordination from rocking the Intellivision since birth but that went along with the leg-eye coordination of sitting in a bean bag.  So at age five I'm barely mobile.  But Cal wasn't the fastest guy in the league, either!  He reacted to the swing of the bat.  If the ball was going to be close to second base when it took a bounce Cal would make sure to be close to second base.  If it was shooting past third Cal didn't speed force his big white self there, he tried to be standing there when the ball came.  It was all about reaction time.   I love that about Cal.  I loved it then.  He was big and white but he knew how to play shortstop so well that it didn't matter.  I'm saying this now.   When I was five my interpretation of "Cal Ripken" was I AM GOING TO DIVE DRAMATICALLY FOR THE BALL AT ALL TIMES.

This is my strongest memory of the love of baseball;  standing in the backyard about twenty feet from whoever would hit for me, popping a crouch, and then yelling "OOOH CAL RIPKENNNN" as I dove, body outstretched, missing the ball by a yard and jackknifing face first into the dirt.  This was before I had a lot of velocity.   I mean, look at me.

I was going to have to learn to get where the ball was going and put my entire body there because I was the size of the ball itself.  I didn't participate in our "25 Great Calvin & Hobbes Strips" list but as much as anyone here I was Calvin.  I was born "hyper advanced."  It didn't mean that I was smarter than anybody, it just meant that I learned faster.  And also that possibly I had more fighters to choose from.

I was tiny and my brain was trying to work big.  I learned to speak more quickly than my friends, which meant that I also learned larger words more quickly than my friends, which in turn meant that I began thinking abstractly more quickly than my friends.  Sometimes Calvin will say a lot and all it means is that he hates it when it rains.  I hated it when it rained too.  But like Calvin I also wondered WHY it rained, and not the scientific explanation.  I wanted to know what the purposes of science were.  So I usually got laughed at by the facetious adults and whisked back outside, or toward the Nintendo, and so it went.  That pumpkin with legs there was my Hobbes.  He didn't do much talking.  I mostly threw him against things.

Calvin liked to run around and have fun.  He said that he didn't want to play baseball because of all the meaningless rules and regulations, but the truth is that he wanted to have fun and couldn't because everyone else on the field wanted something more.   They wanted to win!  They couldn't believe it when Calvin couldn't understand the rules.  What is he, a girl?  Who doesn't know how to play baseball?  So Calvin stood through it and watched it happen, and at the end of the day sat right back down at the base of the tree with Hobbes and was himself, heartbroken and confused.

My story is a little different, but the song remains the same.  If I was going to do what was intended -- play the most fun sport in the world and be like Ripken -- I was going to have to start at the bottom.  T-ball was for kids my age.  Then on to Little League.  College, or maybe the minors.  Then the bigs.  And I was going to dive miraculously for every infield fly and drizzly half-assed bunt they sent my way.  OOOH CAL RIPKEENNNNN

T-ball, for those who may not be familiar with the concept, is baseball for children unable to make their bodies function in a way that allows them to follow simple instruction.  The pitcher stands on the mound and throws nothing.  The ball is sitting on a tee and the batter takes a swing, and baseball proceeds as per usual.   But the pitcher throws nothing.  AND HE STILL MAKES THE MOTIONS.  Every single T-ball pitcher I faced took signals.  SIGNALS.  The T-ball catcher wasn't giving signals but the pitcher was taking them and shaking off the ones he didn't want.   What's the catcher going to do, put two fingers down and grab his nuts if he wants the ball to remain motionless and suspended directly in front of the hitter?  Jesus Christ, the catcher was the fat or retarded kid we couldn't trust to not drop the ball and run screaming into the woods.  And that pitcher would do a full wind-up, kicking his leg high and following through.

The second major problem I ran into is that I wouldn't be playing shortstop.  I'd be playing "second shortstop," which meant I'd have to stand where the outfield grass meets infield dirt and field the ball in case the person playing "first shortstop" missed it or couldn't get there in time.  You see, everyone had to play.  At all times.  They didn't want an overzealous father "thinking this was America" and getting carted off after a shirtless brawl just because his precious little Susie does not possess the ability to react without stimulus and so of course must be given an important position in the infield for the entire game.

I wasn't going to get to be like Cal.  Not yet.  I wasn't even going to get to hit the ball, at least not for real.  So I guess I was closer to Billy.  I promised myself that this was just a stepping stone and that I'd do everything possible to enjoy the game for what it was:  a game.  A fun game.  My Mom and Dad would be there and the infield dirt seemed to have a lot fewer jagged rock faces than my backyard. 

And so I came to know the 1985 Danville Pony Ball T-Ball team.

The look on my face basically tells you everything you need to know.

Although that might've been because I had to kneel in front of my coach's puffy white pantaloons with her vagina cocked and aimed at the back of my head.  Not that I really knew what a "vagina" was outside of the really gross page that looked like frog dissection in my World Book Encyclopedia, but I'm pretty sure I identified that lady with "vagina" at all times.

She was barely even a coach.  She didn't make a lineup;  we batted (and sat on the bench) in the order in which we arrived.  I can't stress to you what a bad decision this is.  It means that you start the game off with the girls who arrived in high-priced mini-vans from piano recital and baton throwing practice and javelin assault or whatever.  They were MOTIVATED~!  Their mothers pointedly made COME ON HONEEEEEY the soundtrack of my adolescence.  COME ON HONEEEEY THROW THE BALL.  COME ON HONEEEEY SWING THE BAT YOU CAN DO IT.  They would erupt in thunderous democracy-ending applause when Jennifer or Gennifur or Jynaferre hit the middle of the tee hard enough to make the ball land in fair territory negative two centimeters in front of the catcher and  they'd barely be able to control themselves when she was called out at first before realizing she had to drop the bat and run.   Most times I'd bat next to last.  Sometimes I'd show up during the second inning and be penciled in to hit after some lady's dog.

So I stood in second shortstop thinking about number twos and made that face a lot.

One of two friends I had on the team was Matthew Smiley.  He was my best friend in kindergarten and the first grade.  He joined up with the same hopes, dreams, and expectations as me.  So he made this face, which was up to his surname specs in absolutely no way.

I don't remember Matthew being very good, and honestly the only things I remember about him as a person are that I liked him and that he always wore striped polo shirts like Steve from Blues Clues.  Sometimes when I'd get bored in class (which was every second of every day ever) I would make up wrestling cards on paper pitting classmates against one another (Jynaferre vs. Gennifur in a lights-out bull-rope match) Matthew would always be my tag team partner.  I called us "The Rock n' Roll Express" because I was five.  We always won, but if we wrestled the black boys in class we went to a draw. 

Matthew moved away near the end of first grade.  About a month later I got a post card of he and his little sister standing on a deck overlooking the mountains and on the back in blue pen read "I miss you alot!"  I never wrote him back because I am a fucking jerk.

My second friend on the team was Brad.  He was the African-American I knew in the world who didn't want to beat the shit out of me on a regular basis, possibly because he was half my size.  I have fond memories of being taken to my first ever Mexican restaurant by his Mother.  When I moved away in the fourth grade my last memory of G.L.H. Johnson Elementary was Brad running out and jumping on my back and telling me how much he was gonna miss me.  He taught me a lot about different cultures and how we should all respect one another for the hearts we have inside instead of assuming shit based on the colors of our skin.

At least I think this kid was Brad. 

Alternate joke not requiring a paragraph of setup:  As our lead-off man Brad "stole" a lot of bases!

Representing my balls in the team photograph are Chicken Little and Dirty Dick Murdock, our alternating first (and second-first) basemen.  Notice here how we all appear to be wearing hats that are five sizes too big.  This is because Danville Pony Ball did not actually ask us what size of things we wore.  We all got the same T-shirts (lol) and hats.  Even the Bad News Bears had uniforms that fit.  I was barely "this many" and I was already being bombarded with some serious crimes in cameltry.

The hats were made out of the stuff they fill attics with in poor peoples' houses.  My head has always been pretty big so that's why I look like Dontrelle Willis as opposed to the kid on the right there who just ends up looking like Mickey Rooney as an old man shrunken to boy size.

Political humorist Mendal King kept our team in stitches with his acerbic views on the White House.

The only reason we ever won games was because of this kid, who I remember as a boy but now am not gender-sure of.  It could have been a Mighty Ducks situation where Coach Cunthole came across this little girl belting stickball homeruns in the slums and invited her to join the squad to a chorus of AWW WE GOTTA PLAY WITH A GIRRRRRRRL??? and I may've just missed that team meeting.

I said above that I batted next-to-last because this kid always batted last.  Sometimes he wouldn't show up until the fifth or six inning, and without a lot of fanfare would wander into our dugout (which was just a bench) and take his seat on the end beside me.  Since the best hitter of the first twelve kids was that clayfaced retarded kid it was up to us to pull through and salvage the afternoon of the twenty-or-so soccer parents who'd wished they'd had boys.

I didn't develop power in my swing until I became a Thomean fat guy in high school, but I always had good contact (on the immobile ball) and almost always got on base.  Then this kid would step up and just belt one off the wall in deep left, and we'd both come around to score.  We did this every time I can remember us battling side-by-side.  Two guaranteed runs every couple of innings.  We finished off the season undefeated and enjoyed our two-man(ish) glory with a slice of crappy pizza and a Minute Maid juicebox.

At least I was certain we'd been undefeated until a few years later, when a kid I'd played against said HIS team had finished undefeated, and it turned out we were all undefeated because "nobody was keeping score."  I was pissed, but at least now I can go around telling people I'm undefeated in mixed martial arts fights and not technically be a liar.

I guess these chicks were into beans or something.

But the true fart of our vaginal team was THIS girl.  I don't remember her name because I had a team of doctors surgically go into my brain and remove all traces of it lest I be forced to Google her location using my computer's Google function and then go Google her to death with my hand's stab you in the face with a broadsword function. 

This girl's Father (or Uncle, or sire, or whoever) was our second base umpire.  That meant that she played second base.  She could not catch or throw a baseball but she was right there in the middle of our infield between two shortstops and sixteen first basemen anchoring a quarter of the game's plays.  Every time I'd scoop up a ground ball and throw it to first she would invariably do that thing where she acts like she's about to fall backwards and is using her glove hand to try to grab onto something that will keep her upright.  Every game.  Five or six times.  

After a while I began lobbing the ball underhand to her.  She'd squat with her butt touching the bag and let the ball bounce in front or beside her (even if parts of the ball were touching her) and wait for it to come to a complete stop before picking it up.  The upside of the lob was that not only did the ball stay in the infield but sometimes overzealous boys on the other team would come sliding into the bag and boot her in the ass.  When the lob failed enough I decided to make the trek over to the bag and just hand her the ball.  I didn't want her to feel left out, after all.  So I field a grounder and in one of the most highly specific and vivid memories of my entire life (including things I did earlier today) I jog over to the base, tell her to hold out her hand, and put the ball in her hand.  AND THE BALL ROLLED OFF OF HER HAND.

I wanted to murder her.  STONE COLD MURDER right there at second base.  So I yelled "YOU STUPID IDIOT" in the fashion that I might today call her a fucking stooge, with exaggerated hand motions and everything.  My mistake was, again, that her Father (or the devil, or whoever) was the second base umpire.  I picked up the ball and tagged the base.  He didn't say anything.  I looked over at him, and he just stood there silently.

The runner stopped about two or three steps before the bag because he had a rudimentary knowledge of how the game of baseball is played, but there was still no call.  I reached out and put my glove on his chest.  WHILE STANDING ON SECOND BASE.  Nothing.  The runner stepped onto the bag and the umpire yelled "safe." 

I was five years old, and this was the first time that a grown-up had been so shitty to me that I noticed and faced it head on.  I replied, "what?"   He said, "safe.  He's safe."  I started to cry.  But not sad baby cry.  The kind of cry I still do when passion hits me.  The kind that makes the corners of your eyes bleed red and the rage fill up inside so strongly that your face is actually forcing the water out from pressure.  In a breath, I let it out.

"Fuck you!"

I screamed it.  So everyone could hear.  So my Mom and Dad could hear.  So God and God damned Karla Davis 15 years later could hear it.  The umpire tossed me out of the T-ball game being played by teams of fourteen children who were all just standing around on the field at the same time.  Before he could say anything else to me I had already passed third base and was walking toward the road with my face in my hands.

I missed a game or two and a few days later my Dad chose to reaffirm my love of the game by having me stand at second and take line drives that were supposed to be ground balls to the legs.  I didn't have Hobbes to explain to me how life worked.   I had a pumpkin with legs.  He just taught me about Halloween and walking.   I didn't know why I suddenly hated doing this.  I didn't have that insight to know that I was hurt by the injustice and not by the rules.  I took a shot to the hip that left a big, ugly brown bruise and started to cry.  My Dad thought I was being a baby and took me home.  I wasn't crying about the bruise.

T-ball opened my eyes to the fact that my life is just a connecting point in the lives of everyone else.  I am to the kid with his shorts pulled up to his armpits as he is to Matthew Smiley.  Bodies in uniforms on a picture you never look at.  And in the end, what did the pretend baseball earn us?  Satisfaction in a job well done?  We didn't even keep score.  Social skills?  We all had the same prestige, the same point, the same goals.  Does the coach remember me?  I like to think I'm trying to make my life important.  But she doesn't.  In the same way I can't even remember her name.

At my last game we were to be awarded a trophy for our championship season.  It was a white marble base with a golden man the size of my penis holding his arms up, proclaiming me a congratulated participant.  They gave it to me right out of the cardboard Pepsi box they'd used to carry them all from the engravers.  I loved it, and I still have it, somewhere.

From Calvin Edwin Ripken Jr. to Calvin and Hobbes.  Stay gold, Pony Ball.

P.S.  I played with this one kid who looked like Billy Joel.