Coffeehouse Chronicles ...There’s No Crying in Baseball!

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The other day, I was watching the Dodgers’ game when the phone rang. It was my old—I’m sorry... former partner, she hates when I call her “old,” Dot.

Dot is the same partner I trusted to watch my back way back in the hit years, but was of ZERO help when, if you'll remember, I struggled with the cashier at the East LA McDonald’s; all I wanted was a couple of breakfast burritos. Also, the same partner who found herself enamored with the homeless—excuse me — unhoused gentleman on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and San Vicente, when she allowed her smoothie to modify the interior color of my brand new Silverado. 

But I digress, Dot called me the other day to tell me that she flipped the channel to see what all the hoo-ha was about with the Boys in Blue, ‘this baseball nonsense’ as she referred to it. 

“Hey,” she started in on me. “What kinda shenanigans is this where someone gets on base and then they change the runner, huh?” 

She’s gotta lot of nerve! She watches football and has the gall to ask me about one pinch runner?! Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but NONE of those guys play an entire game. NOT A SINGLE ONE! Some of these fellas will play for three ball movements, jog over to the bench, stand around in a group looking at an iPad, and then yell at one another about what the other guy did wrong. And there will be other times when a guy’ll be in for a ball movement or two, tap the top of his helmet, and run to the sideline looking for some oxygen.

Are ya kidding me?

Wait, then there’s basketball. None of those guys play the whole game either. All they have to do is bank this big orange ball off a plexiglass backboard into a big, round, orange hoop, run down and attempt to prevent the other team from doing the same thing on the their end of the court. Oh, and just like the other sport mentioned above, the whole team will get a break between the four times the game is divided into, spending fifteen minutes in an air-conditioned room. In this room, the head coach will write some stuff on a dry-erase board, calmly telling these fellas, all getting their rest, what he needs them to accomplish when they return to their chairs around the wooden planks. 

And again, these guys are in and out of the game several times.

In baseball, if you really must know, the toughest sport in my humble opinion, the players must play the entire game, unless the coach pulls you, and then you can’t come back in until the next game! Your job is to swing a skinny little wooden stick, about two or three times the diameter of a broomstick, at a tiny little ball that some other guy is throwing at you at about 100 MPH. If you can connect and drive that ball back into the field of play, and if someone stops that ball, then you have to run your butt off in order to get on the base in front of you before the guy who stopped the ball can pick it up and throw it to the person guarding the base that you’re trying to get to.

Look. If you're successful, shouldn’t there be the opportunity for you to sit down and rest after all that? I think so. 

It’s called a pinch runner, Dot. Look it up.

The guys you like to watch spend more time sitting and waiting to get into the game than my guys do. And my guys play over 150 games in a season! Give me a break, would ya?!

You know what to do!  Drink ‘em if ya got ‘em!

Go Dodgers!

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