My One True Love

Baseball is my one true love. I played the game for 8 years. I started at Tee Ball, bur was forced to quit my senior season. I started smoking about 2 years before, and it had just finally caught up with me. During try outs, I was blacking out and couldn't see the ball as I was warming up. I still managed to throw it back and forth a few times, but then I started to feel like I was going to pass out, so I said fuck this and left, and that was the end of baseball for me.

So about a month ago, I bought a remote for my tv. I hadn't been watching tv for a while. I broke the original remote for my tv years ago, and then I bought a new one and I lost it and then I went about a year without a remote, barely watching tv. I finally got a new remote, and I started watching baseball again. Like seeing an ex-girlfriend, or boyfriend, I started missing my first true love. So I decided I was gonna see if I still had anything left in me.

I went to Walmart. I bought 12 baseballs. I went to the baseball park and started throwing them back and forth against warm up fences. Basically, there are 2 fences that a pitcher and catcher will use before the game, and there is a fence behind each of them. Got the visual? Well I was just throwing 12, then throwing 12 the other way. I through the ball about 100 times. After this, I ran a lap around the entire park. There are 4 baseball fields. Let me remind you that I smoke nearly 3 packs a day. But I have fuck loads of tenacity. At about the half way point, I felt like dying. It was sick. But I ran the whole fucking lap without stopping once, and needless to say I was pretty fucking proud of myself. I was even more surprised that I still had the speed and accuracy with my throwing. I guess once you truly master a craft, you never lose the touch. I surely didn't lose mine.

I didn't start pitching until later into my 8 year career. The last 4 I pitched. I pitched a lot in my last 2 however. For 6 of those eight seasons, I played first base. That was MY position. I am a first baseman by trade and a damn good one at that. No one in my league could scoop a ball out of the dirt like I could. No could could stretch like I could. No one had the precise timing that I did to stretch for the catch. I was always the clean up hitter too. Not to toot my own horn here, but I was the fucking man. I'll get into baseball stories more often in my blogs, but this is mostly an introduction. When I played, I was in the top 5 in our entire league. Maybe the top 2. I made the All-Star team every year I was eligible. 6 years. I batted clean up 3rd every All-Star game and if I wasn't starting at first, I was the starting pitcher. Good times. The best day of my life came from baseball. One day I shall tell this story.