We last left the Indians going for the ”gold” and getting dumped on their collective butts. A new season had now begun and JJ came back as manager, much to the chagrin and frustration of the league president and, I’m sure, and Miss Congeniality of 1911 or whatever year it was. If you don’t know about her, she’s discussed in a couple my other stories, principally dealing with the Dodgers and the fun and games in the minor leagues, which had nothing to do with either baseball or the kids. I’m not going to rehash the inner workings of the league, because I already explained that in the story called “Wild Indian Uprising.”
The team returned pretty much intact because we had only had a couple of 12-year-olds that were no longer eligible. Last season, the Indians had four players named to the All Stars and they got to go play in the inter-league tournament. True to form, they lost the first two games and were eliminated. I went to one of the tournament games and came away with the conviction that the opposition was playing a different game than we were. It was time to write to my congressperson (politically sensitive) about parity of the Little League teams in his/her congressional district. Maybe I could somehow induce Miss Congeniality take this project on. The assumption there was that she could write. That’s cruel and unbecoming of me, but I am going to leave it in here anyway.
We had nine returning players, all of which were approaching the 11 to 12 year old magic number, although most of them are still only 11. The rules were rather simple and basically said you can’t play in the league if you’re over 12. God – think about that for a minute, washed up at the age of 13! Our nemesis, the Red Sox, had been decimated. They only had four returning players, simply because last season they had loaded their team roster with 12-year-olds through some draft hoi-polloi. (This sneaky ringer business is covered in the other story I mentioned.) Okay! So big deal, they won the gold. The Indians were in a position that would allow the team to have at least nine players coming back over a two-season period – good, bad or indifferent.
So we had the draft, and once again JJ Junior came through with some scouting reports, and we picked up one more 11-year-old and a bunch of 10-year-olds who at least understood where first base was. My good buddy Scooter was still with the Red Sox, however he kept in contact with a number of our old Dodger teammates that were still around. To show you what kind guy Scooter was, he used to show up at our practices to be with his buddies more than my prima donna did. Scooter was a keeper!
The Red Sox had a new manager and I knew him – good guy, and really interested in the kids. He came up to me one day at practice and told me that Scooter wanted to be traded to the Indians. I doubt very seriously if Scooter’s mom knew about this, because she would have had a serious ventricular episode. I thought about the proposal for maybe 10 micro-seconds and told him I did not think the league rules would allow that. In reality, my thoughts were about spending the next two and a half months with Miss Congeniality pointing out my inbred aboriginal faults at every opportunity. Besides that, I think Blue-eyes would’ve gone ballistic. Being a true “Indian Mom,” she was waiting to ambush Miss. Congeniality and was probably ready take her scalp with a dull paring knife.
My rules about practice were still the same. “You want to play more than two innings, show up to practice.” Mr. Prima Donna was back and I was shocked at how much he had grown. He still had trouble making it to practice, but at least he understood that I wasn’t going to put him on the starting roster, even though he was probably the best overall athlete on the team. He started bringing his own bats and I told him it was okay in practice, but he probably couldn’t use them in a game. The bats had to be sanctioned by the Great Little League Gods in Williamsport or something to that effect. His dad called me that night, a little red-assed, and said he thought that was a silly rule. I told him I agreed! His final comment was something about corruption in the Little League National management. Man, you gotta love parents! I should’ve told him that his kid really didn’t need a bat because he has an awful lot of trouble just swinging at a ball, but I didn’t.
I taught some of the better hitters how to pull an outside pitch and pop it into right field which is where most of the two inning players would end up and were usually not paying a lot of attention to what was going on. This worked out a lot better than I anticipated and the rest of the team began to try to emulate this batting style. The kids thought this was great stuff, they still had the “chop” and now could hit the ball to the opposite field. We only had one left-hander and he was a good hitter, that fact had gotten around, so the other teams would swap positions, the right fielder to left and left would go to right. My little lefty was really unhappy about this; he took it somewhat personal, thought there ought to be a rule and in the final analysis tried switch hitting, which was a total disaster. He was not able to master hitting anything outside, because a majority of the pitches were in on him, being thrown by a right handed pitcher.
The little Indians still had their totally incompetent athletic moments, but they weren’t as plentiful as the other teams, and we were leading the first-half by three or four games. We were clearly the best team in the league at that particular time, and were well on our way to winning the first half. The gang was having a lot of fun and the frustrations of the previous year were behind us. Mr. Prima Donna actually began to show up for practices and I paid a lot of attention to getting him into a mode of swinging at the ball. Blue-eyes actually came up with the solution. She told me after one game that he was closing his eye at the plate. What?!I couldn’t see this because his back was to me, so during one game I walked out of the dugout and stood by the backstop and sure as hell, he was closing his eyes. I suspected that he was afraid of the getting hit. I didn’t say anything to him about it, but the next practice I concentrated on teaching him how to get out of the batter’s box. Bingo! The kid started swinging, started to get hits and loved every minute of it. He came to all the practices after that. During the rest of the games, he got plunked once or twice and would just look over at me, smile and run down to first base. I felt guilty that I had not picked up on this problem.
The tribe attempted to renew their less than acceptable signals to the first base coach. I was able to curtail that activity by providing some socially appropriate signals that did not include “crotch grabbing,” the “Italian salute,” or “half-mooning,” and was able to avoid any further conversations with the league president. They had noticed on television that the “pros” were constantly spitting. The concept of role models and emulation presented itself in the form of a constant shower of spit. I was concerned that the dugout, “wigwam,” would soon turn into a slippery sea of saliva. I lowered the boom and told them no more “expectoration” in the dugout. You don’t want to know what they thought that meant!
Much to my dismay, one of the creative moms made a sign that said, “No expectoration (Spitting) in the Wigwam.” It had a little cartoon of a kid in a baseball uniform, with a feather in his cap, spitting on his shoes. Clever! I found out a little later that they were walking up to the plate, spitting in front of the plate and turning to the catcher and saying “I just expectorated!” This unfortunately proves the point that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.
That didn’t completely eliminate their desire to emulate the pros, so when they weren’t on the field they were standing next to the cyclone fence having a contest about who could spit farthest. They called it the “expectoration exhibition” and actually kept score. I have no idea what the prize for first place was. One of my geniuses brought a bag full of dried peas and the occupant of the batter’s box soon became the primary target, being plummeted by semi-soggy peas. You’d be surprised how far a dry pea can go when launched by an expert 11-year-old. I didn’t do anything about this activity for the simple reason that I figured next spring, before the season started, I could come over and harvest 42 bushels of peas.
The league came back with the mandated jockstrap and cup rule. I had a little visit from the president who had heard about the Dodgers’ escapades in the minors regarding these devices, and suggested that any recurrence of this would be unacceptable and punishable by death. I told him he was going have some enforcement issues, but I would admonish the “Wild Bunch” not to re-create the sling shot episodes. True to my prediction, the league did have a problem, but with the Red Sox. I wasn’t at the game, but apparently some of the boys were using the cups to drink their Gatorade or whatever. I thought this was pretty hysterical and came to the conclusion that it was probably instigated by Scooter. Ya gotta love that kid!
At the end of the first half we had three games to go and were ahead by four. I decided to start all the underachievers and let them play at least four innings and they did fine. We only lost one of those games. We were pretty hot stuff! I had four kids that were batting well over .400 and our fielding was pretty solid. We even executed a number of double plays. I was happy, the kids were happy, the parents were happy and Miss Congeniality was really pissed, which made me even happier. I got a call from the Cleveland Indians’ owner, wanting to know if I was willing to move to Cleveland. I told him no, that I was “contractually bound for the balance of the season, but let’s talk after it’s over.” God! What an ego!
The second half will be covered in another story – later!
Moral of the story – If you open your eyes, you can sometimes see and do more wondrous things.
J.J. Addingnuttin 