Talkin' Baseball

With spring training in full gear, and the boys throwing the horsehide around down in Florida, I thought this would be an appropriate time to relate my two favorite memories of going out to the old ballyard.

This will not be a tedious Bob Costas-like treacly reverie ("From Ruth to DiMaggio to Mantle . . . from grandfather to father to son . . ."). The team involved in this instance is the Philadelphia Phillies. Pleasant memories would make for a dish of thin gruel indeed.

In March, 1987, catcher, Lance Parrish, was acquired by the Phillies as a free agent. He was promoted by the club as "the missing piece" for a pennant winner, having experienced a championship season with the Detroit Tigers. MAB Paints even produced a bumper sticker which read, "Lance Us A Pennant!".

Sadly, Parrish would not enjoy success in Philadelphia. The team stumbled to an 0-6 start out of the gate, and the fans were loaded for bear upon its return to Veterans’ Stadium. Parrish had not gotten off to a hot start. A certain vocal element at the Vet had determined that after six games, the team should be getting more production from him based on his salary. Even more regrettably, his wife’s identity had been ascertained by this element, and they let her have it with both barrels as she sat in the stands.

Parrish would never be accepted by the Philadelphia fans as anything more than a carpetbagging Detroit Tiger. After the debacle of the start of his first year, he kept his mouth shut and took his paycheck every two weeks. He gave off a similar vibe to a short timer in prison marking the days off a calendar. In October, 1988, he was traded to the California Angels for the long forgotten David Holderidge.

I remember attending what must have been a Business Person’s Special, and having seats, or more accurately, having moved to a seat, with a good view of the players on the first base line. The Phils had been behind all day, but here, in the ninth inning, with two outs, they had mounted a valiant comeback and were down by a single run. The sacks were loaded and big-ticket free agent, Lance Parrish, was striding to the plate. The crowd as one rose to its feet, moved by the expectation of victory to root for even this detestable a figure . . .

Parrish did not let the suspense build. He tapped the first pitch to the shortstop. I had an excellent view of Parrish as he really dug it out down the first base line, giving 110 percent, probably had been hoping to finally do something right, so he could stick it to the fans by not coming out for a curtain call. The throw nipped him by a good seven feet. All the air went out of the fans’ balloons, and they profaned Parrish’s name in any number of creative ways, and public address announcer, Dan Baker, told everyone to drive home carefully.

The second memory involves the person who accompanied me to the contest, who for our purposes today will be known as "The Big Man". The nickname is a tribute to his stature, as he stood, and to my knowledge, still stands at a height of 6'7". For you readers in the UK, I believe that’s six stone high.

The year was 1986. The Mets were in town. That whole contemptible bunch that would win the World Series on the strength of Bill Buckner’s bad back and feet. Showing his gameness, The Big Man elected to go even though he was suffering from a bad case of conjunctivitis, or as it is more commonly known, pinkeye.

I should note at the outset that we never had it as a goal when attending these events to become embroiled in any kind of sudden, violent altercation. In point of fact, I remember attending a July 4th Fireworks Game against the Cubs with The Big Man. We had made our way to a section with a much better vantage point than the ticketed seats we had purchased. A couple of obviously intoxicated rowdies were annoying everyone in our section. Demonstrating his sense of civic responsibility, The Big Man leaned over to me and confided, "If we had actually paid for these seats, I would call the ushers and have those guys thrown out."

Initially, there were no problems. In the second inning, our section began evidencing the fact that the scum from the sewers of Queens must have slithered onto I-95 and was beginning to arrive en masse. We took the prudent course of moving back a few rows, as there were soon dark clouds appearing on the horizon, regarding the continuing detente between these foreign interlopers and some outnumbered Phillies’ fans in our section.

The inevitable melee erupted with a terrible fury in the visitor’s half of the eighth inning. I do not know what prompted it. I do know that the remaining bedraggled Phillies’ fans were taking the worst of it.

We stood and watched from our perch a few rows back. The eventuality never occurred to us that the mob might start looking for "fresh meat". But the pummeling below had abated and now their eyes were turned towards us.

Given our BAC and cardio conditioning at the time, sprinting to safety was not a realistic option. Also at that age in a man’s life, cutting and running seems a less than manly option, less acceptable than when a man begins to acquire a certain wealth of years. And it was fortunate that we stood our ground, for we learned a valuable lesson that will never be given voice by the likes of Bob Costas . . .

You can say what you want about the toughness of the New York sports’ fan, and this myth can be propagated until the end of recorded time. But from hard-won personal experience, I know that not even the heartiest amongst that unfortunate breed has the staunchness, the conviction, the sheer will, to advance with malicious intention on a drunken 6'7" man, whose right eye is noticeably oozing pus.