playing baseball

Also, one time I told my coach "I'll get 'em next time" and he said "Yeah right."

!!!! this is possibly the cruelest thing i've ever heard!

Wasn't that a line in the Take No Prisoners version of "Coney Island Baby"?

for mookie, my 2 K's:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v134/tracerhand/DSCF0331.jpg

however - WE WON. and i tagged a guy out trying to steal.

deez it IS pretty ramshackle but yeah it's the british baseball federation:

http://www.baseballsoftballuk.com/baseballnews.php

I would like to join a fast-pitch or hardball league, but I have no depth perception.

The last time I played in an actual game of baseball was sixth grade gym - kept striking out for the first few at bats so I switched to a longer, heavier bat with everyone laughing it up. Proceeded to make perfect contact, pulling the next pitch over the (high-school size) left field wall.

Retired immediately.

Tracer, if P. G. Wodehouse were alive today, he'd be writing about your team.

!!!! this is possibly the cruelest thing i've ever heard!

One of my summer team coaches would come up with the most terrifying/hilarious shit and we often couldn't tell whether he was joking or serious. A ball got past me in right field, which allowed a run to score, and he yelled "THAT'S YOUR RUN, K*LLM*N -- YOU'RE BRUTAL -- I THOUGHT YOU WERE AN ATHLETE." Another one of his favorites was "DON'T SCREW UP THIS TIME." He was a low-level scout for the Dodgers.

Heard a lot of awful stuff from fathers (and one mother) of much younger players (8-12), worse than Greg Kinnear's character in the newer Bad News Bears. Wish I could remember some of it.

Look at all those walks and wild pitches!

Tracer, are you trying to grow the 80s Red Sox facial hair? If so, kudos!

Should grow one handlebar and change name to Tracer Fingers.

tracer, do you get paid to play

awesome

Congratulations to the Herts Spring League Division 2 champs The Sidewinders!

That score card looks so cool with the Japanese characters mixed in with the normal scoring symbols. Funny how they use a dot for runs instead of filling in the diamonds.

The coverage in the British Baseball Federation website is so adorably Americanized British.

"The Sidewinders got off to the best possible start by putting eight runs on the scoreboard in the top of the first inning."

teehee "on the scoreboard."

Tracer this is awesome. Do the Sidewinders have a John McGraw/Leo Durocher-esque player manager?

thank you! "our goal is to win all our games" as our language-school administrator and right fielder, eisuke says (the middle guy in the first photo up there).

we do not get paid to play, hahaha as if!! in fact, we have to pay the umpires and also we have to pay for club insurance, in case one of us hits an old lady in the head with a line drive.

yeah it was a sloppy game - first game of the season, everyone was very rusty, and as you can see the pitchers really hit a wall near the end. the dragons' big mistake was bringing in their relief pitcher though - he was garbage.

one thing i have learned all over again is there are probably 1000 gradations of excellence in baseball. i'm somewhere around 120, 130 out of 1000.

So now you understand the units of the batting average.

if only i hit that well :/

I wish I could play baseball!!

I can hit 70mph cricket balls (sometimes)

for parts of middle school and high school, i went to an international school in new delhi, india. i loved it when we played baseball in gym; since i knew how to hold and swing the bat correctly, i was automatically about 50 times better than everyone else in my class, most of whom were like danish and malaysian

I played little league for a few years in grade school, but I had like zero self-confidence. Sure it was fun to be a part of a team and play in a league, but I was usually too shy to even swing at the ball, resulting in me being either the worst or second-to-worst hitter on each team I was on. The coaches usually stuck me in right field for three or four innings and then pulled me when I played the minimum requirement for each game. I believe I averaged two or three hits a season. However I did have one shining RBI moment when I hit a double off a relief pitcher, surprising everyone on both benches.

^ worth it

I was fairly good in Little League, but never got any decent coaching/training. By high school I was a weak-armed 2nd baseman who stupidly let on that he knew how to keep a scorebook. So I never got to play -- the coach needed me to keep score. About 2/3 of the way through my first season I handed him my uniform and said "I signed up to play, not keep score." He was such an aggro asshole -- I think that took more courage than just about anything I ever did.

ha my sr year in HS a kid a class below me 'joined' the baseball team for the sole purpose of being the scorekeeper (he had little interest in baseball). i made fun of him for this for about 2 weeks before becoming v envious (because by that point i was going as a spectator to all the home games + some of the away ones anyway).

I wish I had kept playing in high school, I was pretty good (relatively) in little league. I was my own Retrosheet, too, I remember diligently recording my stats after each game. One year, when I was like 10 or so, I realized I was hitting so well that I should try to flex my power. Three massive uppercut swinging strikeouts later I was back to line drives.

I haven't got the first clue about how to go about getting onto a team now, anyone in NYC have ideas?

worse than Greg Kinnear's character in the newer Bad News Bears

Kinnear played Vic Morrow?!?

The equivalent, yeah.

dude i just found out that one of our players (the guy with the goatee) was on the same high school team as fukodome!!

fukudome

you might impress him by pronouncing it "hoo koo dough meh"

why would mispronouncing his name be impressive?

two caps to the ...

that's how you pronounce it! it would be more impressive than misspelling his name, that's for sure.

nyc metro baseball league

If you were born in August, you have no excuse for failing to make the Show.

http://www.slate.com/id/2188866/

The magical date of Aug. 1 gives a strong hint as to the explanation for this phenomenon. For more than 55 years, July 31 has been the age-cutoff date used by virtually all nonschool-affiliated baseball leagues in the United States. Youth baseball organizations including Little League, Cal Ripken/Babe Ruth, PONY, Dixie Youth, Hap Dumont, Dizzy Dean, American Legion, and more have long used that date to determine which players are eligible for which levels of play. (There is no such commonly used cutoff date in Latin America.) The result: In almost every American youth league, the oldest players are the ones born in August, and the youngest are those with July birthdays.

steve, my buddy pronounced it with an "F" at the beginning though! i assume he knows what he's talking about

"NY Beers" - sounds like my kinda team

They use the same letter for 'h' and 'f' but that doesn't mean every Japanese person pronounces an 'f' like an 'h'- They don't call France "Huransu."

OK, I asked someone who knows a lot more than me. "Fu" is in the row of "h" sounds, but it is actually pronounced more like "fu" than "hu."

"fu" and "hu" are identical in japanese pronunciation... there is no distinction in the syllabaries.

but that said, i think people might pronounce things differently to english speakers.

Never played but this thread is sooo awesomes keep up the good work, esp. Tracer!!!

felicity, pls to tell if doggy is a-ok??

Back in my Amoeba days we used to play a yearly softball game between the two stores (before the LA store opened). I think our team generally got whooped.

Played from 2nd grade to 9th, but was not very good. Highlights: hit home run to send our team into playoffs in 7th grade, distracted both teams with bizarre Dada-inspired outfield chatter, mastered the "huge turn around third, pretend to be scared of throw down line by catcher, take off for home when he actually threw" stolen base, caught a no-hitter. Lowlights: never figured out how to spit correctly, gave up prominent spot on fun indie team for bench spot on "better" well-funded team, failed to win favor with coach's cute daughters, ignored my angry father ordering me to quit team and leave dugout after playing only three innings in a doubleheader.

Fifteen years ago, I played for a bar-sponsored summer softball team in Chicago. We sucked because our three best players were poached by the neighborhood lesbian team, but our (often toothless) players knew the best places to get $1 bottles. We had great parties in three or four languages.

Sammy's playing Little League now, good arm for a little guy and his hitting stroke is coming along nicely. I play vicariously through him.

one thing i have learned all over again is there are probably 1000 gradations of excellence in baseball. i'm somewhere around 120, 130 out of 1000.

I would probably be a 1 or 2.

"DON'T SCREW UP THIS TIME."

Very motivational.

I can hit 70mph cricket balls (sometimes)

Wow I have watched cricket but had no idea the bowlers got that kind of velocity. No wonder the batters are padded like lunatics.

felicity, pls to tell if doggy is a-ok??

Oh yes. She was just called up again after a long rehab stint in our Great Lakes farm club. Still pretty toolsy and a lot craftier.

I think cricket pitchers can actually throw faster than mlb pitchers! (that's what someone told me once, at least)

A typical fast delivery has a speed in the range 136 to 150 km/h (85 to 95 mph). The fastest delivery that has ever been officially recorded clocked in at 161.3 km/h (100.2 mph) and was bowled by Shoaib Akhtar of Pakistan during a match against England in the 2003 Cricket World Cup. The batsman on the end of the delivery was Nick Knight; however, his wicket remained intact.

ha hhah aaa - i just copied that exact bit from wiki!

so i guess i was lied to.
again.

steve that's a good point - he might have been "going easy on me" - i'll find out the truth sunday, i promise!

tombot i am probably overestimating myself (EVEN NOW)

jesus christ today i was garbage

i apparently have idea what to do when a bat is placed in my hands

what really came home to me today is the vast multi-branching choreography of playing the infield, especially if you play first or second. short and third you don't do a whole lot besides flash the leather and have a cannon for an arm (at least when there's a right-handed hitter up) but just put a guy on first base and all of a sudden a second baseman has at least six different things he might have to do depending on what happens next - is the ball hit to the right side (run to second)? to the left side (cover or back up first, depending)? is it a steal (run to second and take the throw from the catcher)? is it a wild pitch? is it coming at YOU? okay maybe only those really but dammit it feels like fifteen things at once

did you win?

sounds like he's getting pretty confident – might want to send a little chin music his way!

I already told him that when a player is hit by a pitch, sometimes they attack the pitcher. He seemed mortified but then I plunked him and he chased me around waving the bat.

has he been to a batting cage?

they often have special machines for smaller kids that pitch relatively slowly and/or use softer balls

hmm i should check that out. i'm still trying to get him out of the occasional habit of diving forward as he swings, he's hit the ball a couple times off his hands.

he tried switch-hitting a couple times and hit the ball, i didn't start from the left side til i was in middle school so he's way ahead of me.

<3

omar, wd like to see footage of kid goin' Piazza on your Alejandro Pena

ha speaking of Mike, after he chased me around (as described upthread) i told him that whenever a batter fights someone he's not supposed to bring his bat (i didn't talk about Marichal) but mentioned once a pitcher threw a bat at a guy "on accident" and he said "i think it was on purpose."

lol otm

Wanted to buy two new non-used gloves, one for a gift and one for myself but boy these are very expensive.

nice gloves are so expensive. i got a nokona amg 1200 a few years back on super clearance (i think it was like 75% off) from a random sports store that was closing. consider myself lucky on that one.

I use the same glove I've had for ~25 years, but the Brooklyn Cyclones' pregame catch on the field promos appear to be over for the season, so it may not get used this summer.

yeah if you invest in a nice glove hopefully it's a one time purchase that lasts a lifetime.

I've had the same glove I've used since high school. it's holding up well but I'd be devastated if I had to get a new one!

i had a wilson a3000 -- technically an outfielder's glove, but i used it in the infield -- that ultimately fell apart on the inside, and it was gonna be more to fix than get a new glove : /

sad

Have a really big (like 15 inch?) Mizuno I got at the swap meet for about 20 bucks and it rules. I do use it to play infield sometimes.

good for first base!