I never played baseball as a child.

For one reason, I was crippled. A bone spur had to be removed from my right knee, although what the surgeons snipped off more resembled a doorknob. To get to it, various ligaments and tendons had to be cut, stretched and/or sewn in the kneecap area. With surgical procedures being what they were in the 1950's, the physicians told my parents that I would limp for the rest of my life.

Luckily, being a kid, I didn't listen to somber adults (and I still don't). My leg healed up quite nicely although I did walk with a cane for a couple of years. The only time I now limp is when I'm running fast, an activity I avoid because of my advancing age and lardy gut. Of course, if I hear the words "It's going to explode!" or "He has a gun!", I can still make short speedy bursts that would make the Road Runner proud.

Now, before you get all weepy about my poor handicapped childhood, please note that I wasn't thrilled about sports in the first place. The only outdoor physical activity that interested me was swimming... which I considered to be non-drowning exercises. Swimming can save your life. All other athletic endeavors are crap in comparison. Besides, taking it easy on my leg was a great excuse for staying at home and watching television.

Why so jaded, even as a kid? It didn't take an Einstein to figure out that, in every sport, there is a winner and there is a loser. If there was a series of interconnected events, there would be one single winner... and a whole mess of losers. And, if you remember anything about childhood, the champions were always rubbing their victories in the faces of those they defeated. I was a nerdy kid with thick eyeglasses and limbs like gnarled twigs. I had enough humiliation in my life, thank you. I didn't require additional embarrassment which my father could observe unquietly from the bleachers.

That didn't mean, however, I was excused from the game. A kid with glasses who couldn't run? A natural born umpire, of course. Plus, the cane gave me an added advantage when I made an unfavorable call...

...such as, "You're OUT!"
The batter turned towards me, snarling. "What do you mean, I'm out?"
I argued, "You swung three times. You missed three times. You're OUT!"
"Have the pitcher throw me another one!"
I stared at him in disbelief. "What the hell game are you playing?"
The batter, a bully to begin with, demanded, "Give me a good one this time!"
"Whatever you say." With that, I whacked the kid along the side of his head with my stout oak cane. When he crumpled to his knees, I yelled at him (after kicking the baseball bat out of his reach, naturally), "Is that OUT enough for you or do you want to try for unconscious?"
The batter wisely crawled over to the bench.

Naturally, being umpire made me unpopular with both teams. In turn, I learned to hate my classmates back. Seemed only fair. When winning is everything, good sportsmanship goes straight down the sewer... and anyone who stands in your way of victory is dead meat. School districts are eliminating music and art classes to perpetuate such athletic programs? Wonderful value systems we teach in our educational zoos, huh?

The day my leg was finally healed enough for me to go to school without the cane, I got the stuffing stomped out of me fifteen times. I had to use the cane again for the next two week as a result of the new injuries.

After that, I avoided America's Pastime like the plague.

Until high school.

The coach decided that we teen-aged urchins were all going to play baseball for the next four weeks in gym class. Because of a supply shortage, he told us to bring in our old bats, balls and gloves that upcoming Monday. That's when I raised my hand and told him I had no baseball equipment, used or otherwise. At first, he thought I meant I had given my stuff away but I assured him (along with various other classmates who had come up the ranks with me) that I had never owned any of that gear because I had never played baseball. This horrified the coach more that if I had told him I devoured human flesh for lunch (a distinct possibility considering Joplin High School's cafeteria at the time). The coach sent me home with a note demanding that I at least come to class with a baseball mitt, be it be dug out of the trash or otherwise.

I had never seen my father so overjoyed in his life.

Forget all that sissy art work and writing! His son was going to buy his first baseball mitt! And he was going to help me purchase it... mostly because I was totally clueless about what to get. Please bear in mind that I wasn't some starry-eyed tot dreaming of the Big Leagues. I was more interested in getting an automobile now that I had my driver's license. But that didn't faze dear old Dad. We were about to partake in a father/son rite of manhood concerning bats and balls and other items that sounded like they should be in a marital aids catalog.

What I ended up with was a monstrous wad of inflexible yellow leather. It look like some mad scientist had grafted Mickey Mouse's hand over mine. The sporting goods clerk assured us that the glove would become more supple after a few years of game time pounded into it. Years? Yea... Right...

On that cloudy Monday afternoon, I showed up in gym class with my new glove. I exhibited it to the coach in the hope that that would be enough and I would never have to use it. No such luck. The coach put me in center field. Then he decided we needed a little "pepper." Pepper? The coach wanted something spicy? Pepper, it turned out, was his term for throwing the ball around. Hard. When he zeroed in on me, I caught the speeding sphere.... momentarily. Eeee... OW!! I dropped the ball & my new glove to grab my injured paw and howl in pain. I also did a little dance which verified my lack of coordination was not restricted to my upper body.

The coach had never seen theatrics like that before in his life. Didn't I know how to catch a baseball? Hadn't I tossed the old horsehide around with my father? Couldn't I play through the pain?

That was a big fat negative on all three counts.

At this point, the coach thought I was an alien from outer space. (I got that a lot.) It was beginning to sink into his thick skull that I had really, really, REALLY never played baseball before in my life.

So, naturally, he had me bat first.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), the famous Irish playwright & critic once wrote, "He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches." An additional appendage to that axiom is, "He who cannot teach, coaches gym." I have no idea about those so low on the food chain that they cannot even coach... but I suspect a number of them are in the various Ozark school systems. Would explain a lot.

The pitiful cry from my classmates proved that they were brighter than the coach. They were more than contented to let me warm the bench for the entire period so I wouldn't slow up the game. I considered that a brilliant idea myself... but the coach had other ideas.

The day was as gray as my mood. The coach was on the pitcher's mound, glaring wickedly at me. My classmates were lounging on the grass, knowing the ball would never reach them. The outcome was predictable. A swing and a miss. Another swing and a miss. A third swing and a miss. As I turned to leave, however, the coach yelled out, "Where are you going, Corrington?"
I pointed to the bench.
"Oh, no, you don't! You are going to stand in that batter's box and keep swinging that bat until you hit a descent ball!" the coach bellowed. "Not a tip. Not a foul. A good solid hit! Even if it takes the rest of this class period and the next and the next! Even if your arms become so sore, you think they'll fall off! Even if I have to keep this entire class after school until dark, we're all staying here until you hit that ball!"
My classmates' cry now resembled the funeral lament of a Greek chorus. As I trudged back to the plate, I knew in my heart I was about to become the most hated kid in high school. With the bat above my shoulder, I awaited the next pitch.

Do you believe in God?

This may seem like a peculiar time to ask such a question but my fellow classmates seem to believe that divine intervention occurred at that point in my life. They claim they saw, just as the coach threw the ball, the gray clouds part above me and a rainbow from on high sparkle me with dazzling color.
Me, I don't know. I had my eyes shut at the time. All I cared about was hitting that damned baseball.
I did.
Swinging with all of my might (which, I admit, normally wasn't that much), I hit the ball with a earsplitting crunch. The impact jolted through my elbows, shoulders, back, hips and knees like a bolt of electricity. Whiplash tickled the back of my neck as my clenched teeth were jarred sideways.
The center of the wooded bat exploded as if housed a lit M-80. It shattering in two. Splinters buzzed around the catcher and me like stinging hornets. The blunt end of the bat bounced across the ground, end over end, with dull echoing thuds.
And the baseball?
Cannon balls don't travel as fast or as straight as that baseball did. Eighteen inches off the ground. As level as a shot. Up the one-foot high pitcher's mound. Into the coach's shin for a (quite literally) bone shattering smash.
The screaming that the coach bellowed made my earlier yelpings seem like nothing at all. Apparently, he couldn't play through the pain, either. As I strolled around the bases at a casual rate, no one attempted to pick up the spent baseball and tag me out. My classmates were so incapacitated by fits of howling laughter that they couldn't even stand up, much less toss a ball.

I don't know who called the ambulance. We watched medics strap the coach onto a gurney and haul him away in a roar of sirens & blinking lights. We who remained behind took leisurely showers, dressed, then waited in the hallways outside of our next classes.

A few days later, the coach was back... in a cast that went above his knee. I didn't get all the particulars but there was something about tiny bone fragments, screws and a steel pin. I also didn't ask the coach for details lest he tried to brain me with his crutches.

From that point on, I was forbidden to play baseball. Instead, I was to run laps around the high school for the rest of the season. All I did was jog around the corner and sit under a tree until I could sneak back into the locker room and change into my street clothes. What was the coach going to do? Hobble after me? He could barely get out of a chair.

So, to speak for all handicapped and formerly handicapped individuals who have had to endure such idiots in their lifetimes: Screw 'em. Such clowns pester you with false pity or treat you as subhuman or both. That's because they think they are superior to you and probably everyone else, for that matter. The truth is, we are all freaks during some part of our lives. Some of us are just stuck with it for our entire lifetimes. We all have strong points and we all have weak points. Don't let egoism, prejudice and preconceived ideas about others be your imperfections.

End of sermonet.

The only time I have picked up a baseball bat since then was when a girl thought there was a prowler in her apartment. It was her bat and her place (which is why she knew where the bat was) so she handed the bat to me. When someone darted out of the bedroom, I swung three times. I broke the coffee table, smashed a lamp and caught the guy right in the mouth. Turned out it was her ex-husband who taken up the career of junkie and had decided to take back the jewelry he had given her during their marriage. The Las Vegas police took him away. The case was plea bargained down to drug rehab and it never went to court... so neither did I.

I had to fork over the cash for a new lamp but not a coffee table. She hated the old one because she kept constantly smashing her little toe into it when she got up in the middle of the night. I didn't get any dental bills either. Clark County picked up that tab.

A miracle bailed my sorry ass out of trouble once when I was on the old high school grassy diamond. I shall not tempt fate or God's patience again.

I don't do baseball.

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