Monday, June 14, 2004
This week we feature a great short piece about softball, speed, and missed opportunity by Kit Kiefer.
Too Much Money Sunk Into Truck
by Kit Kiefer
The Greater Iola Softball League started another season Wednesday, and no first-pitch ceremony was required to get things going. A beer was plucked from a cooler, one of the Erickson boys stepped into the box, Ron the barber lifted a backspinner in the direction of home plate, and everyone settled in like they'd never left.
Jacobson Field is cheek-by-jowl with the swampier end of the Iola millpond. There must be a rule or something that says you have to locate a softball diamond near the prime mosquito-breeding grounds, because you make the circuit from New London to Big Falls to Lanark to New London and you never stop swatting. Shank a foul ball into the swamp at Jacobson Field and clouds of mosquitoes come boiling up like brushfire smoke. They’re not so thick in May but by early June everyone smells like Off! and sweat and brat grease on game nights, and the mosquitoes -- the year's third or fourth generation by that time -- start liking the smell. Other bugs will swarm around the lights, but mosquitoes always head right for the business. They're not smart, they don't live long, but they're focused.
The softball field is also the high-school football stadium so the lighting's decent until you get to about left-center field, where there's a dark spot. The outfielders learn to play the dark spot pretty well, though if it's hit into the dark spot it's probably going out anyway. A bigger problem is the snow fence they string across the 30-yard line to serve as the outfield wall. By the time the outfielders know they're near it they're either into it or over it, and if they catch a ball and fall over the fence with it it's still a home run. Second basemen and shortstops looking for a break usually beg to spend a couple innings in the outfield. In Iola the outfielders beg to play infield. It's a tough league.
The magazine company has a team but it's usually lousy. It's made up of the younger guys who work on the sports magazines and some of the husbands of ad designers who need another night out. The guys who write for the coin magazines pull muscles too easy, the guys who write about cars live too far away, and it's just not a priority for the comics guys, all of whom have gloves around somewhere, buried in boxes filled with Yes records and episodes of Thunderbirds.
There's no shortage of managers on the company team. Bob manages because he can't pitch all game every game. The leg and the arm hurt too bad because of the arthritis, and if a line drive through the box ever caught him in the nose or the chops he'd be in rough shape because of the hemophilia. The townies like Bob so they try not to scorch one through, but now and then some numb-nuts with a $200 bat will rip one hard as he can back through the middle and you say prayers. Bob's pretty quick for a guy with one pretty good arm and one good leg, but not quick enough for that.
JT can manage, too. He likes to manage things and is pretty good at it until about the fifth inning, when he inserts himself in the lineup. He has some athletic ability but he also has 50 pounds and 20 years too many on his resume. It's hard to watch him leg out a triple, and not because it takes so long. You see it means more to him than a regular salary and three meals a day. It’s like the guy in Damn Yankees who turns back into what he was rounding third, and you just wish you could take away those pounds and years for him and say, "Hey, you got your wish. Run to daylight."
JT can play first base but it's better to play Cheese over there. Cheese is six-foot-10 and can catch what you throw at him as long as it’s not too high or too low, but he can't play anywhere else and he's capable of hitting a ball into the millpond just by taking his usual half-hearted swing, so he has to stay in the lineup at first, at least until JT can't take not playing and Cheese not catching bending at the waist and he puts himself in. If JT makes an out he broods about it and is no good for managing from that point on, but if he gets on he starts thinking about the next at-bat and that ruins him for managing, too. The only good thing that can happen when JT pinch-hits is that he gets a hit and pulls a muscle and has to leave the game. That happens a lot, fortunately. Hope springs eternal on opening day, and on the company team the hope is that JT tweaks a groin in the fifth of the opener and spends the whole season aggravating it.
Baumer can manage, too, but he always bats himself leadoff and plays shortstop when he really has the skills of a seventh-hitting second baseman. He's a pretend switch-hitter who once hit one out left-handed down the 150-foot right-field foul line at Tigerton in a modified fast-pitch tournament, and that ruined him for any real softball. There's no advantage in switch-hitting in slow-pitch. It's not like you turn around because you can't hit the curveball. The only reasons to switch-hit are because your team's ahead by 20, behind by 20 or you're a jerk, which Baumer is.
Once you get past the top spot in the order Baumer's actually a decent manager. Because everyone hates him, Baumer doesn't worry whose feelings he's hurting and he puts players where he thinks they belong when he thinks they belong there. The team wins more often when Baumer manages but no one's happy, even the guy batting cleanup. He's unhappy because his buddy's unhappy, and his buddy's unhappy because he plays only half the game, the second half, and gets to bat just once, and he needs lots of ABs to get the swing back. They'd rather have fun than win, which is something Baumer can't grasp. Whenever Baumer's not managing he hits ninth, out of spite, but he still plays shortstop. A totally angry Baumer's just not worth it.
Everybody on the other teams hate Baumer, too, and they don’t just try to beat the company team; they try to pummel the company team, and Baumer in particular. The other hope that springs eternal all along the company team’s roster is that Baumer break a leg sliding into second the first play of the year and miss the whole season. That actually happened a couple of years ago. Everyone speaks fondly of that year; the company team won the championship, and none of the townie teams seemed to mind.
The team drew GLH Excavating in the opener, which was tough because Truck's back in town. Truck got his name from the first word he said, his daddy’s business and, along with similar-sounding words, the bulk of his vocabulary. He played tackle on the team that almost won Division 6 state, and he would have had a scholarship to Wisconsin if he had shown a casual acquaintance with the alphabet and numbers beyond 10. As it was he wound up at a school up north with someone paying the bills and taking tests for him, and after running over 180-pound linebackers for four years he was given an honorable discharge and a schedule of tryout camps.
"The school learned right off it couldn't educate him, so it might as well try to place him on a football team somewhere," Bulk said. Somehow Bulk knew Truck’s dad, maybe from bowling. Bulk knew everyone who bowled, and in Iola, everyone bowled. "They were figuring on the Dave Krieg effect."
"The what?", E-Boe said.
"The Dave Krieg effect,” Bulk said. Bulk has a habit of talking like giggling, so that anything he says sounds funny, even when it’s only a little funny. Bulk tries never to talk about anything too serious. “You remember back when Dave Krieg played and the announcers couldn't say his name without mentioning the college? It was never, 'Pass completed by Dave Krieg.' It was always, 'Pass completed by Dave Krieg, from tiny Milton College.' They don’t like the 'tiny' part down in Milton, but, you know, the rest is free advertising. Kinda creates this image in your head of a couple of red-brick buildings and a football stadium kinda like the one here. Saturday afternoons playing Maranatha Baptist or something. Milton College couldn't pay for all that advertising."
"Probably not,” said Mort, who had a firm grip on reality and talked serious about everything, even the funny stuff. “The college went bankrupt right after Krieg left."
"There you go. If they could have hung on long enough for the Dave Krieg effect to kick in, you know, they'd be in business today.”
Mort said back, “Don’t you find it kinda odd that the college that created the Dave Krieg effect never got to benefit from the Dave Krieg effect?”
“I don’t think so,” said Bulk. “The guy who invented the TV never made a cent off it, either.
“Anyhow, Truck took the schedule of tryout camps and goes back home, and his old man throws away the schedule. Says the only team his son’s trying out for is the Packers. Says his Truck was born to be a Packer, and by God, he’s going to be a Packer. Only one problem.
"No brains?"
"No speed. Ran like a 6.6 40. Figure a guy's 6-7, 280, and that's a big guy, but in pro football that guy's a tight end, and a tight end can't run a 6.6 40. Truck's dad paid me 50 bucks to redo his resume, but he didn't need a better resume. He needed better wheels. Truck's dad said, 'Hey, you're in sports. Don't you know some guy somewhere who can make Cameron -- that's his real name, Cameron -- go faster?' I called an agent friend and he suggested a speed coach, lives over near De Pere. He's the one who got a four-eight out of Travis Dorschner.
"Who?"
"Doesn't matter. He got a four-eight out of him, which if you'd ever seen this guy run was like drag racing. Truck's dad shells out fifteen thousand for this speed coach to work with Truck for a month. He calls it an advance on future earnings, something like that. Coach works with Truck for a month, he goes to a camp on the carpet, down in Iowa City or someplace like that. Runs a six-even. Six-tenths of a second off his old time at fifteen thousand. That's twenty-five hundred per tenth of a second, his dad figures, which meant to get him down another second would run 25 grand.
“That’s a lot of sand and gravel, but to get his kid a tryout with the Packers it’s worth it, so Truck’s dad – Glenn, he’s the ‘G’ in ‘GLH’ – pays the speed coach. Actually tells him, ‘You get my kid down to a five-even and I’ll pay you thirty.’ Speed coach does everything he can with the kid, feeds him protein-powder shakes, has him run with a tire, run steps, run with one of those parachute things, gets him down to a five-point-oh-nine. The old man pays him twenty-five of the thirty grand and then kicks in the extra five for getting Truck a tryout with the Packers.
“A tryout with the Packers – boy, that’s what Truck’s dad’s been dreaming of since Truck was in junior high. Truck’s dad’s probably spent more than a hundred grand on this tryout, when you figure the football camps when he was in high school, the speed coach, the resumes, the videos, and just what it costs to feed someone Truck’s size. It’s not like feeding me, you know.” Bulk is about six feet tall and weighs 135, maybe 130.
“Day of the tryout, tryout’s at nine, and Truck’s not there. Nine-fifteen and Truck’s not there. Truck’s dad’s there, and the sweat’s just pouring off of him, big targets under the arms, you know. Truck’s dad’s not little either. ‘We see this all the time,’ the Packer guy says, but that doesn’t make Truck’s dad feel any better.
“Finally about nine-thirty Truck comes swinging in, does the bench-press stuff, the vertical leap, does okay in those, maybe the Packer guy is interested, maybe he isn’t. It all depends on the 40.
“Truck gets down in the stance like a sprinter, you know, blows out of the blocks and chuffs down the field. The Packer guy clicks his stopwatch hard after forty yards. ‘Five-five-four,’ the Packer guy says.
“’Get in the truck, Cameron,’” says Truck’s dad. He is not pleased. He’s not even waiting around for what the Packer guy says. He knows.
Anyhow, Truck hooks up with a semipro team after that, goes to England, gets homesick, comes back here, works in sand and gravel. He's still paying off the forty-five to his dad."
Truck brought a herd of his football buddies to play for GLH, and they hit nine home runs among them. Truck hit three mammoth shots, two into the millpond. The final was 31-3. Running around the bases, Truck didn't look like he was capable of six-flat.
Already the forty-five grand was starting to wear off.
Too Much Money Sunk Into Truck
by Kit Kiefer
The Greater Iola Softball League started another season Wednesday, and no first-pitch ceremony was required to get things going. A beer was plucked from a cooler, one of the Erickson boys stepped into the box, Ron the barber lifted a backspinner in the direction of home plate, and everyone settled in like they'd never left.
Jacobson Field is cheek-by-jowl with the swampier end of the Iola millpond. There must be a rule or something that says you have to locate a softball diamond near the prime mosquito-breeding grounds, because you make the circuit from New London to Big Falls to Lanark to New London and you never stop swatting. Shank a foul ball into the swamp at Jacobson Field and clouds of mosquitoes come boiling up like brushfire smoke. They’re not so thick in May but by early June everyone smells like Off! and sweat and brat grease on game nights, and the mosquitoes -- the year's third or fourth generation by that time -- start liking the smell. Other bugs will swarm around the lights, but mosquitoes always head right for the business. They're not smart, they don't live long, but they're focused.
The softball field is also the high-school football stadium so the lighting's decent until you get to about left-center field, where there's a dark spot. The outfielders learn to play the dark spot pretty well, though if it's hit into the dark spot it's probably going out anyway. A bigger problem is the snow fence they string across the 30-yard line to serve as the outfield wall. By the time the outfielders know they're near it they're either into it or over it, and if they catch a ball and fall over the fence with it it's still a home run. Second basemen and shortstops looking for a break usually beg to spend a couple innings in the outfield. In Iola the outfielders beg to play infield. It's a tough league.
The magazine company has a team but it's usually lousy. It's made up of the younger guys who work on the sports magazines and some of the husbands of ad designers who need another night out. The guys who write for the coin magazines pull muscles too easy, the guys who write about cars live too far away, and it's just not a priority for the comics guys, all of whom have gloves around somewhere, buried in boxes filled with Yes records and episodes of Thunderbirds.
There's no shortage of managers on the company team. Bob manages because he can't pitch all game every game. The leg and the arm hurt too bad because of the arthritis, and if a line drive through the box ever caught him in the nose or the chops he'd be in rough shape because of the hemophilia. The townies like Bob so they try not to scorch one through, but now and then some numb-nuts with a $200 bat will rip one hard as he can back through the middle and you say prayers. Bob's pretty quick for a guy with one pretty good arm and one good leg, but not quick enough for that.
JT can manage, too. He likes to manage things and is pretty good at it until about the fifth inning, when he inserts himself in the lineup. He has some athletic ability but he also has 50 pounds and 20 years too many on his resume. It's hard to watch him leg out a triple, and not because it takes so long. You see it means more to him than a regular salary and three meals a day. It’s like the guy in Damn Yankees who turns back into what he was rounding third, and you just wish you could take away those pounds and years for him and say, "Hey, you got your wish. Run to daylight."
JT can play first base but it's better to play Cheese over there. Cheese is six-foot-10 and can catch what you throw at him as long as it’s not too high or too low, but he can't play anywhere else and he's capable of hitting a ball into the millpond just by taking his usual half-hearted swing, so he has to stay in the lineup at first, at least until JT can't take not playing and Cheese not catching bending at the waist and he puts himself in. If JT makes an out he broods about it and is no good for managing from that point on, but if he gets on he starts thinking about the next at-bat and that ruins him for managing, too. The only good thing that can happen when JT pinch-hits is that he gets a hit and pulls a muscle and has to leave the game. That happens a lot, fortunately. Hope springs eternal on opening day, and on the company team the hope is that JT tweaks a groin in the fifth of the opener and spends the whole season aggravating it.
Baumer can manage, too, but he always bats himself leadoff and plays shortstop when he really has the skills of a seventh-hitting second baseman. He's a pretend switch-hitter who once hit one out left-handed down the 150-foot right-field foul line at Tigerton in a modified fast-pitch tournament, and that ruined him for any real softball. There's no advantage in switch-hitting in slow-pitch. It's not like you turn around because you can't hit the curveball. The only reasons to switch-hit are because your team's ahead by 20, behind by 20 or you're a jerk, which Baumer is.
Once you get past the top spot in the order Baumer's actually a decent manager. Because everyone hates him, Baumer doesn't worry whose feelings he's hurting and he puts players where he thinks they belong when he thinks they belong there. The team wins more often when Baumer manages but no one's happy, even the guy batting cleanup. He's unhappy because his buddy's unhappy, and his buddy's unhappy because he plays only half the game, the second half, and gets to bat just once, and he needs lots of ABs to get the swing back. They'd rather have fun than win, which is something Baumer can't grasp. Whenever Baumer's not managing he hits ninth, out of spite, but he still plays shortstop. A totally angry Baumer's just not worth it.
Everybody on the other teams hate Baumer, too, and they don’t just try to beat the company team; they try to pummel the company team, and Baumer in particular. The other hope that springs eternal all along the company team’s roster is that Baumer break a leg sliding into second the first play of the year and miss the whole season. That actually happened a couple of years ago. Everyone speaks fondly of that year; the company team won the championship, and none of the townie teams seemed to mind.
The team drew GLH Excavating in the opener, which was tough because Truck's back in town. Truck got his name from the first word he said, his daddy’s business and, along with similar-sounding words, the bulk of his vocabulary. He played tackle on the team that almost won Division 6 state, and he would have had a scholarship to Wisconsin if he had shown a casual acquaintance with the alphabet and numbers beyond 10. As it was he wound up at a school up north with someone paying the bills and taking tests for him, and after running over 180-pound linebackers for four years he was given an honorable discharge and a schedule of tryout camps.
"The school learned right off it couldn't educate him, so it might as well try to place him on a football team somewhere," Bulk said. Somehow Bulk knew Truck’s dad, maybe from bowling. Bulk knew everyone who bowled, and in Iola, everyone bowled. "They were figuring on the Dave Krieg effect."
"The what?", E-Boe said.
"The Dave Krieg effect,” Bulk said. Bulk has a habit of talking like giggling, so that anything he says sounds funny, even when it’s only a little funny. Bulk tries never to talk about anything too serious. “You remember back when Dave Krieg played and the announcers couldn't say his name without mentioning the college? It was never, 'Pass completed by Dave Krieg.' It was always, 'Pass completed by Dave Krieg, from tiny Milton College.' They don’t like the 'tiny' part down in Milton, but, you know, the rest is free advertising. Kinda creates this image in your head of a couple of red-brick buildings and a football stadium kinda like the one here. Saturday afternoons playing Maranatha Baptist or something. Milton College couldn't pay for all that advertising."
"Probably not,” said Mort, who had a firm grip on reality and talked serious about everything, even the funny stuff. “The college went bankrupt right after Krieg left."
"There you go. If they could have hung on long enough for the Dave Krieg effect to kick in, you know, they'd be in business today.”
Mort said back, “Don’t you find it kinda odd that the college that created the Dave Krieg effect never got to benefit from the Dave Krieg effect?”
“I don’t think so,” said Bulk. “The guy who invented the TV never made a cent off it, either.
“Anyhow, Truck took the schedule of tryout camps and goes back home, and his old man throws away the schedule. Says the only team his son’s trying out for is the Packers. Says his Truck was born to be a Packer, and by God, he’s going to be a Packer. Only one problem.
"No brains?"
"No speed. Ran like a 6.6 40. Figure a guy's 6-7, 280, and that's a big guy, but in pro football that guy's a tight end, and a tight end can't run a 6.6 40. Truck's dad paid me 50 bucks to redo his resume, but he didn't need a better resume. He needed better wheels. Truck's dad said, 'Hey, you're in sports. Don't you know some guy somewhere who can make Cameron -- that's his real name, Cameron -- go faster?' I called an agent friend and he suggested a speed coach, lives over near De Pere. He's the one who got a four-eight out of Travis Dorschner.
"Who?"
"Doesn't matter. He got a four-eight out of him, which if you'd ever seen this guy run was like drag racing. Truck's dad shells out fifteen thousand for this speed coach to work with Truck for a month. He calls it an advance on future earnings, something like that. Coach works with Truck for a month, he goes to a camp on the carpet, down in Iowa City or someplace like that. Runs a six-even. Six-tenths of a second off his old time at fifteen thousand. That's twenty-five hundred per tenth of a second, his dad figures, which meant to get him down another second would run 25 grand.
“That’s a lot of sand and gravel, but to get his kid a tryout with the Packers it’s worth it, so Truck’s dad – Glenn, he’s the ‘G’ in ‘GLH’ – pays the speed coach. Actually tells him, ‘You get my kid down to a five-even and I’ll pay you thirty.’ Speed coach does everything he can with the kid, feeds him protein-powder shakes, has him run with a tire, run steps, run with one of those parachute things, gets him down to a five-point-oh-nine. The old man pays him twenty-five of the thirty grand and then kicks in the extra five for getting Truck a tryout with the Packers.
“A tryout with the Packers – boy, that’s what Truck’s dad’s been dreaming of since Truck was in junior high. Truck’s dad’s probably spent more than a hundred grand on this tryout, when you figure the football camps when he was in high school, the speed coach, the resumes, the videos, and just what it costs to feed someone Truck’s size. It’s not like feeding me, you know.” Bulk is about six feet tall and weighs 135, maybe 130.
“Day of the tryout, tryout’s at nine, and Truck’s not there. Nine-fifteen and Truck’s not there. Truck’s dad’s there, and the sweat’s just pouring off of him, big targets under the arms, you know. Truck’s dad’s not little either. ‘We see this all the time,’ the Packer guy says, but that doesn’t make Truck’s dad feel any better.
“Finally about nine-thirty Truck comes swinging in, does the bench-press stuff, the vertical leap, does okay in those, maybe the Packer guy is interested, maybe he isn’t. It all depends on the 40.
“Truck gets down in the stance like a sprinter, you know, blows out of the blocks and chuffs down the field. The Packer guy clicks his stopwatch hard after forty yards. ‘Five-five-four,’ the Packer guy says.
“’Get in the truck, Cameron,’” says Truck’s dad. He is not pleased. He’s not even waiting around for what the Packer guy says. He knows.
Anyhow, Truck hooks up with a semipro team after that, goes to England, gets homesick, comes back here, works in sand and gravel. He's still paying off the forty-five to his dad."
Truck brought a herd of his football buddies to play for GLH, and they hit nine home runs among them. Truck hit three mammoth shots, two into the millpond. The final was 31-3. Running around the bases, Truck didn't look like he was capable of six-flat.
Already the forty-five grand was starting to wear off.
Thursday, June 10, 2004
The Dixie Bat Works
My Dad's Uncle used to work at the old Dixie Bat Works which was located down near Dixon, Tennesee. This part of the country is where my family is from originally. When I was a kid he gave me a bat they had made but never got around to putting a logo on. Dixie made bats for some Major Leaguers and it was a thrill to have it.
I still have the bat. It's made of ash and has a nice dark stain on it. I have kept it pretty much pristine since then never having the nerve to use it in a game or anything. It was kind of big for me when I got it which no doubt contributed to its lasting. When I got big enough to use it I didn't want to get the thing all scuffed up.
The day I got it was sometime in the summer of 1969. We were visiting my Grandparents in McEwen, Tennesee and went over to Dixon, a drive of like 15 miles, to see the relatives. After I got the bat I went for a walk with a older neighbor of ours. We walked all over town along the railroad tracks. We saw this group of black kids close to my own age. They followed us around all day but never seemed to get closer than like 30 yards. I called out and waved to them many times to come over but they never did anything not even waving back. After a while my neighbor told me to stop waving at them so I did.
I was old enough to understand why these kids didn't want to talk to us but not old enough to think I couldn't somehow get past this unspoken demarcation and meet some new friends to play with.
Later on that day we were driving back to McEwen and I saw the kids again. This time they were playing ball out in a city park. There were only like 5 people on the field and I bet they really could have used more guys to have a better game.
Especially a guy with a brand new bat.
My Dad's Uncle used to work at the old Dixie Bat Works which was located down near Dixon, Tennesee. This part of the country is where my family is from originally. When I was a kid he gave me a bat they had made but never got around to putting a logo on. Dixie made bats for some Major Leaguers and it was a thrill to have it.
I still have the bat. It's made of ash and has a nice dark stain on it. I have kept it pretty much pristine since then never having the nerve to use it in a game or anything. It was kind of big for me when I got it which no doubt contributed to its lasting. When I got big enough to use it I didn't want to get the thing all scuffed up.
The day I got it was sometime in the summer of 1969. We were visiting my Grandparents in McEwen, Tennesee and went over to Dixon, a drive of like 15 miles, to see the relatives. After I got the bat I went for a walk with a older neighbor of ours. We walked all over town along the railroad tracks. We saw this group of black kids close to my own age. They followed us around all day but never seemed to get closer than like 30 yards. I called out and waved to them many times to come over but they never did anything not even waving back. After a while my neighbor told me to stop waving at them so I did.
I was old enough to understand why these kids didn't want to talk to us but not old enough to think I couldn't somehow get past this unspoken demarcation and meet some new friends to play with.
Later on that day we were driving back to McEwen and I saw the kids again. This time they were playing ball out in a city park. There were only like 5 people on the field and I bet they really could have used more guys to have a better game.
Especially a guy with a brand new bat.
