Houston East, 1952. (I'm the kid kneeling at left and wearing the Hawaiian shirt.)
Back on the Post World War II Sandlot, we didn’t have the best coaching or equipment in the world. As a matter of fact, we hardly had any coaching at all beyond those things that we picked up from our dads by chance in games of catch in the backyard after our dads’ work was done, but that didn’t happen every day. Our dads in the Houston East End worked long hard blue-collar job hours and they weren’t always home or simply up to playing catch every day that they were there.
Out on the sandlot, of course, we did a lot of “my dad says this” talking with each other. “Get in front of the ball on grounders. If you can’t catch ’em, at least, block ’em with your body” stands out in my memory as the most universal lesson we all picked up as a dad throwaway message. We might never have picked that one up on our own. There was no such thing as a true hop on our Eagle Park field, but we still came around to blocking grounders at the risk of broken teeth and black eyes. It was the thing to do. Our fathers told us it was.
So, let’s give dads the credit for that first wisdom of the sandlot and then hit upon some of the other things we pretty much figured out on our own by simply playing the game with each other from dawn to dusk during the summers.
Some Wisdom of the Sandlot:
(1) Get in front of the ball on grounders. If you can’t catch ’em, at least, block ’em with your body. Kids who didn’t block grounders were at risk of being labeled as “dog catchers.” These were fielders who chased hot grounders like dogs chase cars. If they do catch up with the ball, they just run along beside it, barking all the way as the ball clears the lot and rolls on down the street.
(2) In making out a batting order, put the fast little guys who show they can get on base in there ahead of the bigger, slower-moving, but harder-hitting guys.
(3) If you’re pitching, throw strikes. If you can get that first one in there for a strike, you put the batter at a disadvantage that remains with him, unless you give it away by forgetting where the strike zone is located.
(4) If you’re pitching, “accidentally” throw one hard, inside, and wild every now and then. If a wild pitch makes the batter fall back or down, it becomes easier to throw a strike with your next pitch, especially if you can put it on the outside corner.
(5) As an outfielder, throw the ball ahead of the runner. To learn this one, all we had to do was watch little kids in right field throw ground ball singles to first base, allowing the runner to safely move on to second base in the process. What we didn’t learn on our own in the sandlot is how to effectively set up and use cut-off men on balls hit deep to the outfield. I didn’t learn that one until I played organized ball with an adult coach.
(6) Play the game to win. If you don’t play to win, you may as well not be playing. (Sandlot Yoga would not have been very popular in Pecan Park back in the day. It probably still isn’t.)
(7) If your opponent has an obvious weakness, take advantage of it. This value taught us how to hit to all fields. In fact, Wee Willie Keeler’s credo, “Hit ’em where they ain’t” simply meant to us: “hit ’em where the other team doesn’t have somebody positioned who looks like they can catch or stop a hard-batted ball. And hey, if it looks like nobody out there can catch, go ahead and swing from the heels, Eagles! This is “track-meet-on-the-bases” day!
(8) Never let the other team back in the game because you feel sorry for them. (See Lesson 6 again.) Don’t confuse the absence of mercy with unsportsmanlike behavior. You play the game of baseball to win – or you don’t play the game at all. Good sports understand this creed. Bad sports are the crumb-bums who beg for mercy and then have a tantrum when you beat ’em fair and square.
(9) Always try to find your highest level of competitive ability. If the other players in your world are bigger, better, and older than you, making it impossible for you to compete successfully, there’s nothing wrong with you stepping back and finding your niche with players who are more at your own level. There’s a place for almost everyone who wants to play. I said “almost.” If you can’t play well enough at any level to keep from hurting your team, you can learn to live with it and still enjoy the game as a fan.
(10) Most of all, the sandlot taught us that we’d never figure out the game completely on our own. To understand baseball better, we need to be dedicated to a lifetime of learning about the game’s history, strategies, and techniques. We still won’t walk away knowing as much about pitching as a Larry Dierker does – or as much about hitting as a Jimmy Wynn, but we will become more knowledgeable – and that just makes the game all the more fun.
If you picked up some special lesson from the sandlot, please post it below as a comment on this article. We’d all like to hear what it was, whether it was a lesson about baseball specifically or life in general.
Have a great week, everybody. Unlesss you’re a Cardinal fan, let’s hope this may be the day that our 2010 Houston Astros start learning something about how to win their first game of the new season.
Houston, Baseball, & Other Musings.
The Pecan Park Eagle 