The Hubley Baseball League
I did like baseball before the elementary heartbreak.
Me, my brother (Short-Fuze), my cousin (Daffy Duck) and a few other people in the neighborhood played baseball almost everyday. Two to three people were on each team.
At our field (the backyard/driveway/road), if you hit a ball into the nearest ditch, it was a double, and if it was into the furthest ditch, it was a homerun. The distance to the far ditch was probably just past second base on a regular field. We played so often that there are still dirt patches where we had the batter’s box and pitcher’s mound.
The other field was the road outside of Cousin Daffy’s place. We stretched out the bases on the gravel-covered road, and made the ditches on either side the foul lines. It forced us to learn to hit up the middle. It also taught us to keep our eyes on the ball and not guess where a groundball was going to go. Inevitably, it would hit a rock and change direction.
I wanted to play all the time, but it was like pulling teeth sometimes. Daffy, especially, was a bit of a whiner when it came to playing. The games had to be on his terms, had to fit into his schedule, and he wouldn’t play if someone he decided he didn’t like that week was playing. He also often quit if he was losing too bad or got a little hurt.
There were sometimes he stayed when he seemed hurt. I say seemed because Daffy was very good at being over dramatic when he fouled a ball off his leg or skinned his knee or something. He laid on the ground and rolled around like he was in severe pain, and then said he was going home. We had to plead and beg to get him to stay.
I’m not sure how it started, but somehow, chanting “Jesse Barfield” encouraged him to regain his strength and desire to play. For those who don’t follow baseball, Jesse Barfield was a former outfielder for the Toronto Blue Jays On more than one occasion, Daffy would say his foot hurt too much, forcing us to plead and beg and finally begin the chant. Then, he would start to jump up and down, pounding his feet on the ground and gritting his teeth as hard as he could. Apparently, this silenced the pain and gave him the ability to continue playing. It was like something straight out of the WWF.
After my elementary heartbreak, I not only became obsessed with reading the sports everyday, but I also wanted to be as close to a professional ball player as possible. This included the way they chewed gum (I stuffed my mouth with as much black licorice gum as possible, made a ball in my cheek, and spit out the black saliva it made on a regular basis… I didn’t understand the ballplayers chewed tobacco…) the clothes I wore (I bought wrist bands, tried to make my own baseball pants, and pulled my socks up over my jogging pants) and what I did while I was getting ready (I scratched my crotch when it wasn’t itchy, fixed my hat when it didn’t need fixing and whipped sweat from my forehead where there wasn’t any).
Things in the Hubley Baseball League sort of fell apart when two of its members joined real ball teams and the fields got too small. There wasn’t enough people to play on the field at the High School up the road, so we made up games to play that were as close to baseball as we could get with two to three people.
Me, my brother (Short-Fuze), my cousin (Daffy Duck) and a few other people in the neighborhood played baseball almost everyday. Two to three people were on each team.
At our field (the backyard/driveway/road), if you hit a ball into the nearest ditch, it was a double, and if it was into the furthest ditch, it was a homerun. The distance to the far ditch was probably just past second base on a regular field. We played so often that there are still dirt patches where we had the batter’s box and pitcher’s mound.
The other field was the road outside of Cousin Daffy’s place. We stretched out the bases on the gravel-covered road, and made the ditches on either side the foul lines. It forced us to learn to hit up the middle. It also taught us to keep our eyes on the ball and not guess where a groundball was going to go. Inevitably, it would hit a rock and change direction.
I wanted to play all the time, but it was like pulling teeth sometimes. Daffy, especially, was a bit of a whiner when it came to playing. The games had to be on his terms, had to fit into his schedule, and he wouldn’t play if someone he decided he didn’t like that week was playing. He also often quit if he was losing too bad or got a little hurt.
There were sometimes he stayed when he seemed hurt. I say seemed because Daffy was very good at being over dramatic when he fouled a ball off his leg or skinned his knee or something. He laid on the ground and rolled around like he was in severe pain, and then said he was going home. We had to plead and beg to get him to stay.
I’m not sure how it started, but somehow, chanting “Jesse Barfield” encouraged him to regain his strength and desire to play. For those who don’t follow baseball, Jesse Barfield was a former outfielder for the Toronto Blue Jays On more than one occasion, Daffy would say his foot hurt too much, forcing us to plead and beg and finally begin the chant. Then, he would start to jump up and down, pounding his feet on the ground and gritting his teeth as hard as he could. Apparently, this silenced the pain and gave him the ability to continue playing. It was like something straight out of the WWF.
After my elementary heartbreak, I not only became obsessed with reading the sports everyday, but I also wanted to be as close to a professional ball player as possible. This included the way they chewed gum (I stuffed my mouth with as much black licorice gum as possible, made a ball in my cheek, and spit out the black saliva it made on a regular basis… I didn’t understand the ballplayers chewed tobacco…) the clothes I wore (I bought wrist bands, tried to make my own baseball pants, and pulled my socks up over my jogging pants) and what I did while I was getting ready (I scratched my crotch when it wasn’t itchy, fixed my hat when it didn’t need fixing and whipped sweat from my forehead where there wasn’t any).
Things in the Hubley Baseball League sort of fell apart when two of its members joined real ball teams and the fields got too small. There wasn’t enough people to play on the field at the High School up the road, so we made up games to play that were as close to baseball as we could get with two to three people.
posted by deadwriter at 10:37 p.m.
1 Comments:
Jesse Barfiel Jesse Barfield... I was thinking WWF before you even said it. Thos were the good old days... I remember two other games. One was the one where its was either two of us or three of us... if two no pitcher. The batter would throw up the ball and hit it while the "outfielder" was in the road trying to field. I remember there was times when either we didn't have the money to get a baseball or softball and we would resort to a hockey ball which by the way doesn't go very far. The game was all about home runs (into the ditch) and whoever got the most would win. The other one was one I would play on my own... i would be a pitcher and throw it against the bottom of the chimney... i had an imaginary strike zone i would have to hit... if i missed it they would get a hit and i would have to field it. other wise they would always strike out (the imaginary other team) i used to play until my shoulder hurt but i kept telling myself that thats what i had to do if i ever wanted to play because i saw ML pitchers with ice on their arms after games. good times. oh and sometimes we would pitch to each other and get mad at each others umpiring... it always came down to us saying "look where i caught the pitch, it couldn't have been a strike".
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