An Idiot's Guide to Playing Baseball as Told by an Idiot (Part 2)

When I finished my first grade season of little league, my mom asked me if I wanted to sign up for next year. I apparently told her, “Well, I don’t like hitting. And I don’t like playing in the field. But I like sitting on the bench.” My mom opted not to sign me up. I was thankful.

After I left the game of baseball, I started a lowly life on the defensive line of organized soccer. If there was one thing I hated more than being hit by pitches, it was playing soccer, and playing defense in soccer was the absolute worst. The games were so slow and boring. The coaches insisted on practicing three to four times a week to have our grammar-school-toned muscles dribble soccer balls around orange cones. My dream in soccer, year after year, season after season, was to play the front line where I'd be able to score goals, win games for the team, and get girls in my class to think I was athletic and, therefore, skinny. The problem was no girls were actually hanging out at the soccer fields at age 9, and I was flat out fat.

Finally, I gave up soccer at the age of 12, having scored just 3 goals in my career (2 of them in my first year, 1 of those against my own team, but my parents didn't have the heart to tell me until years later). It was around this time that I started to get the itch to play baseball again. I began to think of all the time spent standing on the backlines of the soccer field talking to the goalie and picking clumps of grass out of the ground to see which way the wind was blowing. I realized that I had been a complete wimp for bowing out of the game of baseball. I wanted to get back in there and show my skills. After all, I had been staying fresh in my backyard playing wiffle ball and having catch session with my father for years. I'd just slip back into the game, just like I'd never left. Easier reminisced then done.

In the backyard, the day before my first practice in the seventh grade, my dad asked me to show him a swing. Putting on my best Mo Vaughn, I slouched down, wound up like an awkward spring, and swung my bat into the hairs of the lawn and up to the heavens. I stood there, watching my imaginary ball fly over the Green Monster. I waited for my dad to say “Atta boy son. That’s how it’s done.” Instead, I got "What the hell kind of swing is that? This ain't golf."

I showed up for practice with my wooden bat I bought at Sports Authority. I thought it looked like Mo Vaughn's bat. Come to think of it, I never really liked Mo Vaughn. But his baseball cards were worth a dollar back in 1997. "Remember, keep the bat level," my dad reminded me as I left the car. "You got it dad," I said with a brash confidence and a complete knowledge of the great American game.

It was apparent I was horrendous from the moment I met my teammates, most of them kids I tried to avoid in the hallways of Middle School. God, why hadn't I though of this. The other's were kids from Catholic school, who if they had been in my school, I would have avoided in the hallways. There was some kid named Josh, a lanky, gawky, Jewish kid who just sat at the end of the bench the whole season. We became quick friends. Who said Jews and Christians couldn't mix? All it took was an inability to hit pitches over 40 MPH. We became quicker friends when everyone ridiculed me at my first practice for bringing that wood bat. This was the dawning of the age of aluminum and I was living in the dark ages.


As the practices wore on, and I began to mesh less and less with the guys, it became painfully clear that I was missing many links in the necessary chain of command. In my command of hitting. In my command of fielding. In my command of bench talk and baseball trivia. I was clueless. At practice, the more ground balls went through my legs or balls fell in the gap in outfield or lobbed pitches fell over my swinging bat, the more I thought I had made the worst mistake of my adolescent life.

The first game of the season, I was confident I'd be able to turn my lack of practice hitting and fundamental fielding around. Coach stuck me at third base, a position I can only assume was chosen for me from the old number in a hat game.

I remember the first batter for the other team reached safely. Then, the second batter hit a fast grounder to me. I froze a moment, charged it, and fired a sidearm throw to first. Immediately, my teammates and coach began to yell. "Throw to second. Throw to second. What are you doing?" But it was too late, the throw went wide and bounced off the fence behind the first baseman. The lead runner luckily held at second. They were both safe. With my head spinning inside my cap, my coach yelled, "Truchan. Ya gotta get the lead runner at second next time. K?" I nodded back to him with one of those I-don't-know-where-my-head-was nods. But I didn't know where my head was at all, or why I had agreed to this, or what the fuck getting the lead runner meant.

Then, I cemented my middle school baseball career in the annals of local legend. With two on and nobody out, our pitcher wound up and fired the first pitch to the batter. I watched as our catcher took the ball for a strike, jumped up in my direction, and began to fire the ball to me. "Holy shit, the runners stealing third," I thought, catching the runner barreling my way from second in my peripheral vision. I took two steps back, hovered around the base, and caught the catcher's throw. I looked at the attempted base thief with the ball firmly in my mitt. He was gonna be out by a mile. "Don't try, kid," I thought. But then, my mind blanked. Did I have to tag the base or the runner for the out? What were the rules? Who's writing this crazy script? Not knowing what to tag, I decided to try to tag both. I spun around in a circle, tagged third base with my glove, and finished my awkward 180 degree spin only to find the runner safe at third. My spin had drilled me into the ground. a mound of dirt rested around my twisted shoe. My fat ass sat on the edge of the kids cleats. "SAFE!" yelled the ump. "Oh my God," yelled somebody from the bench. Or maybe it was the whole bench, or the whole crowd. "Why did you tag the base, why did he tag the base, he tagged the base, who is he, why was the base tagged, never saw that before, tagged the freakin' base." I learned then and there the rules of baseball a little clearer. But I never seemed to grasp them any better.

My hitting quickly became the thing of locker room punchlines. Need a fan, get the Truchan brand. The Cherry Poppin' Daddies and Truchan's bat are leading the Swing revival. Okay, no one said that but at least that would have lightened the tension. As the at-bats and games and weeks piled up, I became the chuckle of the team and brunt of ridicule towards our losing season. While listening to a couple of teammates talk a little MLB on the bench after a game, I tried to chime in with a great highlight I'd seen the night before on SportsCenter. "Shut up Truchan. You're an embarrassment," one of them told me. When the coaches would tell us to watch pro ballplayers to see how's its done, I'd scoff at the notion, thinking Mo Vaughn taught me shit about hitting.

Coach stuck me in every position that season. I played first because I was chunky, but couldn't dig the balls out of the dirt. I played second once but had absolutely no idea how to cover steals from first or attempt double plays or where to stand on a shift. I found myself roaming around the outfield, from left to center to right, always running in on balls hit to me, every time, only to watch them sail over my head, every time. "Always run back on a fly ball Truchan, and then in on it if you need to," my coach told me. So, I'd take one step back before making a mad dash in, only to watch the ball drop in behind my outstretched glove.

The only logical move that season, my slew of failures, was to try to shape me into a pitcher, of course, and salvage the remainder of my middle school baseball career.

(Part 3 coming tomorrow)