Published Tuesday, April 08, 2008 8:20 AM
Updated Tuesday, April 08, 2008 8:21 AM

 

Finding Mudville 4/9/08

My Own Bull Durham


Every minor league baseball player has his own Bull Durham story.

Filmmaker Ron Shelton who wrote Bull Durham played in the Baltimore Orioles organization around the same time I played for the Cubs. While he didn’t steal my story, he got his done first.

Mine was titled The High Hard One.

I even have my own Crash Davis/Kevin Costner speech. You know, the one about long, slow, wet kisses that last three days.

Here goes …

I believe in giving the corners, twi-night doubleheaders, my sweet spot being the smack of horse hide hitting cow hide at the knees, the 1-2 fastball, called strike threes, chin music, love stories with happy endings, cold beer, the curve of a woman’s legs, that Nicholas Sparks’ novels are a maudlin way of hiding the fact that he can’t write.

I believe that the mafia killed JFK; I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing daylight savings time … I hate the DH … love Saturday mornings … staying up late and getting up early … making out … and poems that rhyme.

And I believe the eyes are the windows to a woman’s soul.

My Bull Durham story took place in Pompano Beach, Florida in 1977.

Our third baseman Gordy, who we affectionately called Dr. Strange Glove, couldn’t catch a cold. A ground ball would smack squarely in the center of his glove and then ricochet off into left field as though it had struck a skillet. So proficient was the E-5 that we started taking bets as to what inning the Doctor would make his first error.

We started a pool, 10 bucks an inning, winners share equally, maximum bet $20 or two innings.

In the fifth inning, Gordy scooped up a slow roller down the line and made a nice throw to first … sailing about 20 feet over the first baseman’s head and a dozen rows deep into the stands. Two runs scored.

The dugout stood and cheered.

Our dugout.

George, our center fielder, jumped up and down and did a fist-pump from the outfield because he had the fifth inning in our pool. He pocketed a cool $320.

On Memorial Day, the Sunny Grove Mobile Home Park Retirement Village Marching Kazoo Band performed.

Some 30 senior citizens give or take marched onto the field, kazoos blaring, power chairs, walkers and lawn chairs in tow and gave a 15-minute kazoo concert, conductor and all. They even kazoo’d the National Anthem. Then they marched off the field playing John Phillip Souza’s Stars and Stripes Forever.

We had our own Nuke LaLooch only his name was Herman. We called Herman Woodstock for his Roger Daltrey perm and black high-top Converse All-Stars with the no-socks option. A first round pick out of Berkeley, California, Herman said “man” like he was auditioning for Dennis Hopper’s part in Easy Rider.

Herman signed a $50,000 bonus contract after a month-long hold out. He used $30,000 of that bonus to buy a new van, fully loaded, complete with mag-wheels, shag carpet ceiling and top of the line 8-track stereo system.

He drove from California to Florida.  And got lost somewhere around Nebraska.

Herman’s sense of geography included the answer, Wisconsin, when asked what foreign country he’d like to visit some day.

Saturdays were reserved for Phantom Ball infield.

On July Fourth we flooded the field in Daytona, sneaking in the night before and leaving the sprinklers running all night so we could see the Firecracker 400 NASCAR race instead.

At all home games, Walt, a retired scout, sat behind home plate and clocked our pitches.

After each pitch he’d look down his bifocals at the numbers flashing on the gun’s LCD and around a chaw of tobacco would holler out, “Eighty-eight,” or “Seventy-nine,” and then spit.

Pitchers took this as a matter of pride. If you couldn’t throw a 90 mph fastball you just didn’t belong on a mound and had no business in The Show.

If you weren’t careful, though, you wound up paying more attention to the gun behind the plate rather than the guy at the plate.

I gassed up a fastball once, thinking the big nine-oh, and let one loose about bellybutton high. The next thing I know the word RAWLINGS flashes before my eyes as the ball rockets back up the middle into center field taking my hat, glove and shoes with it.

From the front row of the grandstand Walt hollers out big and slow, “Ninie-two, one-oh-five!”

The pitch was 92 mph going in, and 105 mph coming back at me.

That’s when I also received my nickname.

Charlie Brown.  

Because that’s what I just got.

Charlie Browned.