Simon And Garfunkel
The Boxer and The Southpaw
Baseball is the pure sport. It is a game like no other. Just ask The Southpaw.
Standing in the batter’s box, he’d think, “This is the center of the universe.”
Looking down the foul lines, he’d think, “They have no end. These lines go on forever.”
In the middle of a game, he’d think, “There is no clock. There are no limits.”
Focused on a pending play, he’d think, “The game can change in an instant.”
Baseball can become the love of one’s life. The Southpaw loved baseball. Baseball loved him back. Like any love of one’s life, it is warm and accepting, brutal and unforgiving. She toyed with him.
When he was two years old, The Southpaw was hitting self-tossed baseballs 30 feet over the backyard fence.
“Kid’s got a future,” the neighbor would shout from his deck. “Ain’t never seen a little guy do that before!”
Maybe he heard it, too, that two year old. Maybe he understood that something special was happening. Maybe he just loved the feel of the ball, the crack of the bat. Maybe he had no idea what was going on. Whatever it was, the little guy was hooked.
“Come on, Dad, let’s play,” he’d shout. Dad would come and toss him some balls.
They’d play catch. They’d bat. He’d pitch to his dad. It went on for years. While they were throwing and hitting and pitching and catching, Little League happened. T-ball. Coach pitch. Kid pitch. Minors. Majors. All Stars. The Southpaw loved it. The game loved him.
Once during Little League, he was on course to be named to his league’s All Star team. The All Star team coach had been his coach during the regular season; the coach’s son and he had been teammates, buddies. Earlier in the season, the coach sensed that the Southpaw could easily overshadow his own son in the game. He had begun to play mind games with the boy. “You’ll pitch tomorrow,” he’d say. But it wouldn’t happen. “You’re lead off, today,” he’d say. But in the lineup, the boy would find himself batting 9th. “We need you to play short.” Then place him in left field. Wherever he went, though, Southy proved his worth. The coach’s son was good, but he never had the passion nor the sense of the game which the Southpaw had.
During the All Star selection process at the end of the season, the coach had made it clear that The Southpaw would not play for his team. Other coaches in the selection process had been stunned. “What!” they said. “Are you nuts? He’s the best we got!”
“Nope,” the coach replied. “Not on my team. Not if I’m gonna coach. The kid’s a head case.”
Of course that was far from the case. Truth be told, the coach was afraid that The Southy would continue to out play his own son and steal more of the glory.
The others in the selection process talked with The Southpaw’s dad, told him the situation and pointed them to a different team in a different League. The other league took him. Southpaw played; his new team dominated and the rest, as they say, is history. The Southpaw became a local legend. That coach and his family moved out of town.
The Southpaw grew. As he matured, his love of the game matured from a little kid’s infatuation into adolescent passion. The leather, the wood, the stitches – the tension. It was palatable. The heft of the bat as it grew heavier over time. The feel of the ball, as he massaged it in his hands. The slow, rhythmic dance of anticipation before the explosion of a well executed play…. He loved the game; the game loved him back.
Little League came to an end and so did the careers of many of the young players. The Southpaw went on, though. He played Sandy Koufax, Mickey Mantle, American Legion. Although he had a great eye and a solid bat, his coaches recognized his ability to place a pitch wherever he – they – wanted it. Although he was fast and covered a lot of ground in the field, the mound became his home. He became a PO – pitcher only. High school ball started at the varsity level.
The higher one goes and the more advanced the game, the more likely one is to be given a nickname. The Southpaw had one. Two, in fact, but they were related on some levels. Southy was the big dog in the pack. It’s not that he was the alpha male with a need to dominate. It was his natural, zen-like attitude of self-control. He stood apart. He lead by virtue of his presence. “Big Dog.” That was it. Big Dog, in its abbreviated form, was Dog. Dog, in its familiar form, was Doggie. Southy was Doggie.
Dogs gnaw on bones. Sometimes, Doggie would pick up his bat and step to the plate for old time’s sake. “Throw this old dog a bone,” he’d say. “It’s in your hands,” his teammates would retort. “Doggie likes his boner!” they’d laugh. Boys will be boys. So Southy was Doggie; Southy was Dog Bone, Bone, Boner.
Once while playing semi-pro ball in California, Doggie was working for a landscape company prepping the grounds around a new office complex. The weather was warm; the facilities were minimal. He was still new to the crew, and about mid morning, needed to relieve himself. Not a stand-by-a-tree-and-pee, he needed to go, big time. Sensing a moment of comic relief, the other guys on his crew told him that the nearest sani-can was on the far side of the project, quite a ways if a guy had to go that bad. “Find your self a big tree, Dog,” they said. And he did. A tree, a few leaves and a couple of handfuls of dirt later and he was done. “Nice job!” they teased. When lunch break rolled around, Southy went for his little blue mini-cooler loaded with peanut butter sandwiches and Gatorade. Scrawled on top on black marker: “Squatting Dog.” “Hey, man, we didn’t want to get the friggin’ lunches mixed up after the job you did!” The whole crew laughed; Squatting Dog was welcomed into the pack.
College ball was Division 1. During his years on college, there were coaching changes. The new coach wanted to play “his boys.” Starting off, though, he had no boys of his own, so it he was heavy into recruiting. The team suffered. It was Southy’s first serious awareness of the business side of the game he loved so much. Eyes were watching. Scouts liked what they saw, but since they were not “the coach’s boys”, neither Southy nor his teammates were highly promoted.
College summers were spent playing semi-pro ball was in a California-West Coast league. Again, scouts liked what they saw, but not enough for an offer from a Big League organization. “You’re better than a lot of guys I look at,” they’d say. “And you have a work ethic like I’ve never seen. But so-and-so’s been highly touted, invested in, and committed to. He’s good, but he ain’t you. You’re better, but you ain’t got the backing.”
Over time, the Southpaw’s love of the game had only grown. After college, the young man who had slept with this mitt was not yet ready to hang up his cleats. A mentor who had known him for years passed his name, stats and contact information on to an associate with connections to independent minor league ball. “The level of play,” the associate said, “is comparable to AA affiliated baseball, but without a Major League team affiliation. Guys move up and down, in and out all the time. Great ball; some incredible venues; contacts and connections all over the world. The pay’s not great, but you get paid to play. What could be better?”
Southy signed. It was a joyous experience. Over the next several years, he played in towns and cities across America. Joliette. Sioux Falls. Winnepeg. Pensecola. El Paso. Calgary. Shreveport. And on and on. Long bus rides across the prairie. Bumpy prop flights between small cities. In proud ball parks which rivaled those of the Bigs. In small parks in smaller towns. He even did a turn for a winter season overseas. He played. He made a name for himself. He was an Australian All Star.
He was let go, picked up, traded and played. For the love of the game, he became a commodity. He played with some of the best up-and-comers and some of those with faded glory whose best days were gone. The friends he made were lifelong.
Only one thing was constant over those years. The money was lousy. “Just wait ‘til you get called to The Dance,” he’d been told on more than one occasion. “Man, when you walk into that locker room in the Bigs, it’s a whole new world.” “You know why you worked through this shit,” they’d say. In the meantime, his team took care of the bare bones basics of life on the road. He had to make up the difference in the off season. So he did landscaping; he waited tables and bartended. He shod horses and did some plumbing. He sold sporting goods online, and he coached little guys who were just learning to love the game. Once, after being released from a team because a player in the Majors had come back from Injured Reserve, which bumped someone, which bumped someone, which bumped someone…all the way down the line until he was bumped, he took a job digging graves. Standing in a hole in a cemetery in a town whose name he never knew, he got a call. He’d been picked up by another team, and they wanted him to start the game the following day. It was 500 miles away. The Southpaw put down his shovel, walked to his foreman, told him the situation. The foreman teared up as he said, “Good luck – and God speed.”
Every off-season was hard. September would come and he would ask himself if the previous season was his last. He’d suffer through withdrawals, take a break, start a new job and wait. By Halloween he’d know. “I’m going back,” he’d say. Once that happened, his whole demeanor changed. He was Big Dog again, the zen pitcher. All was right with the world. Workouts would kick in. He’d stretch, lift, run, read, reconnect, prepare. There was joy in the work. There was a season ahead.
Finally, one year, the Southpaw said, “I’m not going back.” It was different this time. It was over. The years of working his ass off for love of the game, of teammates, of intimate crowds in hometown ball parks, of leather and ash were over. The years of being bought and sold, of 15- hour bus trips, of watching less talented, more highly touted arrogant kids move up while watching seasoned veterans try to work through one more season were over. “I’ve given it my best shot. My time is up.” And so it was.
You can’t say that this is a story of unrequited love. Year after year, the game brought joy to the Southpaw. But like the sirens of old, who lured men with their song and the promise of more, the game had also held the promise of more. The Majors. Rarified air. The Big Dance.
The spring of the following year was especially hard. It was the first time in decades that he had not had a team, spring practice, or a season to look forward to. There was a profound sense of loss, a period of mourning.
In the end, he was still Southy. Big Dog. Bone. But that spring opened the toughest baseball season of his life.
best one so far! you must really love the game! but what happens next??????