JJ and The Girls in Little League — Part Two

We left the Daunting Debutantes, aka the “deb’s,” in something of a dilemma. They had lost their first four of five games, and unfortunately were sitting at the bottom of the barrel. A reawakening had occurred by the Shakespearean declarations made by “Bubba” that articulated her observations in a personal, less than sanguine attitude regarding their losses. Something to the effect that she was tired of getting “her sweet ass kicked,” which caused an immediate reevaluation by her fellow team members. It was now a war. (You have to read part one to understand what brought on this emotional outburst.)

The girls were collectively clearly uptight, and Bubba’s pronouncement broke the ice. As I mentioned in part one, after that they didn’t lose another game, but not without some interesting events. They really got into the spirit of things and had developed some pregame and postgame cheers that they would force the spectators to chant. I taught them the only one that I knew and it went, “Wreck-em, wreck-em ree, kick-em in the knee. Wreck-em, wreck-em rass, kick-em in the other knee!” For some reason, Blue-eyes nixed my contribution. I don’t know why, based on the language that I was hearing on my occasional visits to the dugout. The sweet young things knew some rather interesting words. My blonde roommate’s solution to this language problem was to teach them some Bohemian phrases that she had often used to get my attention.

At one point, the concept of chewing tobacco was brought into play, and of course, was discouraged rather emphatically. Bubblegum was suggested as an alternative, but was turned down by the majority of them who had braces and further said that “gum was bad for your teeth.” Like chewing tobacco is okay?

As an alternative there appeared a 400 pound bag of sunflower seeds and it invoked this massive shower of saliva-laden shells being evacuated throughout the dugout. The debs developed a little game to see how far one could expectorate a whole sunflower seed. Every so often, somebody would come out of the dugout and put a popsicle stick next to seed with the greatest distance. At one point, I expected my daughter, who was part of this routine, to come home and asked me how to propel this projectile further. I already knew my answer was going to be, “Talk to your mother!” I really wasn’t fascinated with the idea of being the father of the best “spitter” on the team. I came to the conclusion that there was far too much “pro ballplayer” emulation.

“Half pint” had probably blackmailed her brother into helping her with her new responsibilities as the starting catcher. It was paying dividends. He had taught her how to block the plate without getting killed, how to field a bunt and doing snap throws every once in a while, which she managed to do with some degree of success. She became a very good bunter, extremely fast and was the lead-off batter. She eventually became an All-Star. She had one minor defect and that could be called a bad temper, probably because she was vertically impaired. If she didn’t like a call the kid ump made, she let him know in no uncertain terms, using some rather less than ladylike language, or accusing him of having amorous interests in the batter. The umps were usually from the debs’ high school peer group. On more than one occasion, Blue-eyes would receive a phone call from the chief of umpires regarding the abuse of his relatively blind umpiring crew. (I ran into “half-pint” some years later, and she was clerking for a law firm and was close to a law degree. She probably made a good lawyer.)

It was mid spring and warm weather had begun. Part of my job description as assistant to the assistant, was to bring an ice chest with soft drinks and water for the team during practice sessions. I would of course, throw in a six-pack or so of adult beverage for the coaches. I’m not much of a beer drinker; one beer usually makes me want to go take a nap. However, after a couple of practices, I noticed that the adult beverages were extremely popular. Blue-eyes didn’t drink much beer, even though she was from Wisconsin. Bev was capable of knocking down at least one, but that was usually it. She was a “branch water and bourbon” afficionado. At the same time, I detected a little more giggling in the dugout than usual. What I found out was our sweet young ladies were taking some of the soft drinks, emptying the contents and going into the little girls room filling the can full of Corona light and passing this around the dugout. From that point forward the “brew-skis” were in a smaller container which never left my sight. God- kids grow up in a hurry!

The season ended with the “Debs” winning the whole “shootin” match, and had eight players named to the all-stars. As winning coaches, Bev and Blue-eyes ended up as managers of this team for tournament play. This means that you play other teams in your district. If you win, you get to go play in a regional tournament and so on. All this tournament play is what’s called double elimination, and no one in our particular league had any idea of what to expect. Our anticipation was early elimination, as had been experienced in the boys’ tournament play. It was almost like starting over, trying to figure out the best place for this conglomerate of skill sets.

The practice sessions went pretty well, but not without incident. During a practice session the team lost Stacy, an outstanding shortstop and a good backup pitcher, to a broken ankle caused by a needless slide into second base. When she hit the bag I knew she was toast. Fortunately, her mother was there and took her to the hospital. The next practice, she showed up on crutches in her pink cast to cheer the team on.

The second incident was one of our better hitters fell off a horse and dislocated her shoulder, so she was through. The third unhappy event was a fist fight. Yes, a fist fight, between “half pint” and one of the players from another team who was about twice her size. No serious damage was done, but the dust was really flying for a short period of time. Bubba finally broke them up. You didn’t want to mess with Bubba! These two wouldn’t quit and had to be separated again by Bev. “Houston! We have a problem.”

Apparently, there had been bad blood between them caused by their mutual interest in some boy at their high school. Oh well, girls will be girls! Bev, who was also the League President, threw them both off the team. Of course, the parents got involved, threatening all sorts of action, making life interesting. Oh joy! I guess that’s why Little League coaches get the big bucks. I didn’t know the other participant in this little altercation, but felt badly for “half pint” because she had worked so hard. They brought up some other players, one of which was an extremely good pitcher and probably should’ve been an All-Star anyway. Not an auspicious beginning!

Tournament play began with the loss of the first game by one run. It was a close game; the “Debs” were hitting, but made too many errors at the wrong time. After that, they settled down and just kept winning, and finished the tournament with that one loss. Wow! District champions! Gee-whiz, pigs can fly. The encouraging thing was there was no raucous behavior on their part, no sneaking out for a quick Corona light, however the sunflower seed storm continued.

Next was the regional championship tournament, which meant playing against much larger demographic cities, unfortunately requiring having to travel all over the northern part of the state for the next two weekends. In some cases, this meant driving as much as 200 miles to get to a weekend series of games, but most of the parents were getting pretty excited. We would have a lot of volunteer caravan drivers. In a few instances, we had to stay overnight, and in retrospect, I’m sure there are a few motels that would prefer never to see any more participants in Girls Little League tournaments.

They pulled the same trick in their first regional game; they lost by a couple of runs. More errors and lousy pitching. The team they lost to was a powerhouse that had won the tournament for the last two years, and was an odds-on favorite to win again. Plus, it was their home field, and their fans were in the multitude, took it all very seriously and were well-armed. They had a bunch of monster girls that look like they were in their mid-20s. A couple of them appeared as though they needed a shave. Know no fear!

The Debs came roaring back, and won the rest of the games by some rather large margins. The final game for the regional championship was against, you guessed it, the Monsters of the Midway, who came out of their dugout foaming at the mouth. The Debs did not seem to be intimidated. They just kept chomping on sunflower seeds and dreaming of a cold Corona. The game was an anti-climax. By the sixth inning our little darlings were up by seven runs, with bases loaded and nobody out. Bubba was at the plate and got two quick called strikes, which were rather questionable, and then smacked the next pitch over the center-fielder’s head, clearing the bases.

As Yogi would say, by now “the fat lady was singing.” As something of a sportsmanship-like aftermath, the girls would line up after every game at third base and “high five” the opposing team. As this was happening, all of a sudden all hell broke loose. One of the monsters, “Sunday” punched Bubba while going down the congratulatory line. This, of course, caused a chain reaction with a couple of other “sweeties” getting into a nasty altercation, with both fists and words flying all over. The coaches and a few fans got it broken up, but it seemed to me that there was a large group of their spectators encouraging this unfortunate demonstration. I stayed firmly attached to the bleachers. After watching their fans, I came to the conclusion that this could get ugly in a hurry, and suggested that we forgo the trophy ceremony and get the hell out of Dodge.

I don’t know if there were ever any repercussions from this incident, but there should’ve been. The Debs eventually got their trophies, but never an apology. Oh well, as I said before, “girls will be girls,” even if they do need to shave. It really didn’t much matter, our little debutantes were now Regional Champs and on their way to the Western Region Championships, whose winner would go to the Little League World Series for senior girls. The tournament was held in a small suburb of Los Angeles, called Hawthorne, and would run for a three day period of double elimination. Our gals would be playing against teams from all over the wild West; including Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah and California, etc. The winner would go to the World Series in Portland, Oregon.

By now, the Deb’s had a multitude of fans, most of them intending to be cheering the team on to victory. Hawthorne is about a six-hour drive from our little community, so it was decided to rent a bus to take the team to the tournament. Further arrangements were made with one of the hotels nearby to house the team during the three-day stay. Blue-eyes went with the bus and I opted to drive with the balance of our clan. Good decision on my part, because based on later reports, the ride down there was pretty chaotic. That poor bus driver didn’t know what hit him. When we got down there, I was staying at the same hotel but a different floor. Another wise decision. The team was on the fifth or sixth floor facing the hotel entry. I don’t think there was any Corona involved, but apparently there was a plentiful supply of water balloons being dropped on unsuspecting hotel customers, which of course were summarily frowned upon by the hotel management. Other than that, nobody got arrested, and the girls were pretty well behaved. The host city did a great job by providing a banquet and a few parties. All in all, the entire trip went without incident; other than a big time hit on my wallet. At least there were no fistfights.

Now, are you ready for this? Hawthorne is where Blue-eyes went to high school and played softball for their team. Even more strange, is that two of the players on the Hawthorne team were the daughters of some of her old friends from her high school days. So, for her, it was something like a homecoming. She actually had time to get together with many of her old friends that she had not seen for years.

Let the games begin! They played extremely well, losing one game over the next three days. They were in the finals, playing against the team from Hawthorne. Both teams had lost a game, so this was for a birth to the World Series. It was an extremely close game all the way through, and our debs were leading in the final inning by one run. Bev had saved CeCe, our best pitcher and put her in for the last inning. She got two quick outs, but then walked the next batter and then allowed a hit putting runners at first and second. The next hitter grounded to short, who for some reason decided to throw to third base. The umpire called the runner safe, insisting that our third baseman had bobbled the ball. From where he was standing, he could never have seen it if it had been a beach ball. Nail-biting time! Not to worry. CeCe had things under control. The next hitter put her first pitch in between the center-fielder and the right-fielder, and two runs scored. Game over, and all hopes of glory were dashed. The Debs came in second, which is about the same as kissing your sister. Oh well, I never liked Portland that much anyway.

The league went on for a number of years after that. Both my other daughters got involved, and the girls’ league was still a fairly major family event. I don’t remember any of the teams ever getting past the district playoffs, so this team was a real anomaly. Blue-eyes retired from management, but became president of the league, which she continually regretted. Bev moved back to Iowa to grow corn or something like that.

After the two younger siblings got too old to play we kind of lost contact with what was going on, and unfortunately so did the rest of the community. Sad to say, the girls’ league dissolved, and that was that. Over the years, we would get visits from some of the players, and it was very interesting to see what became of them. A couple of them did go on to college and played for the women’s teams, but for the most part they just became old friends who enjoyed some interesting memories of a rather exciting time.

This is a true story! I still have the empty Corona bottles to prove it.

JJ and a thing called Girls Little League or You throw like a girl!

If you’ve read some of my previous meanderings, then you’ll remember that I had dedicated some of my time and talents (sic.) to nurturing young male baseball enthusiasts. In other words, I tried coach Little League. Further, you should remember that three of my four curtain climbers were female. This, of course, led to a little disparity of what’s called “quality time with kids,” because there wasn’t any organized baseball for the other gender, regardless of “title IX.”

Blue-eyes had played softball in both high school and college and was an excellent athlete. After a couple of years of watching our semi-coordinated son and the other klutz’s play the game of “baseball,” Little League style, she suggested, ” I think girls ought to be allowed to play in this league!” My response to that was “lots of luck on that idea.” This, of course, led to a “discussion” on gender equality, and she didn’t hold back on her thoughts on the hypothesis of the men in the league being “a bunch of chauvinist, backward ex-jocks, vicariously reliving their childhood” and a few other things in Bohemian, which I didn’t understand and probably couldn’t include in this little dissertation. Naturally, in her charming and delightful way, she got my attention.

Nothing came of this discussion for a week or so, until one day after playing tennis she remarked that her good friend Bev, whose son also played in the league, had played women’s softball in Iowa, both in high school and college. Bev had two daughters, both athletic as hell and was in complete concurrence with Blue-eyes regarding “female integrated” little league. I was drafted, regrettably, to discuss this with our league hierarchy, which I knew would be reminiscent of attempting to push wet spaghetti up a hill. Actually, it turned out better than I contemplated. Although the league charter was not prepared to allow girls to play in the boys’ hardball program, the National Little League had developed a girls’ softball league over the past few years and maybe I should investigate that opportunity. I knew this was not going to go over well, but at least it was an alternative.

I told her about the conversation with him and that I had mentioned things like city property, current attitudes about equality for females, etc. etc., and that I had also mentioned “title IX.” I explained to her that I knew I was in trouble when the president of the league thought title IX had something to do with real estate. I mentioned the girls’ softball thing and her comment was, “that’s great, but what if the girls wanted to play hardball?” I commented I didn’t know, but I thought the league might have a dilemma because “what would they do with all those extra jockstraps?” Blue-eyes’ comment was, “My mother told me you were weird, donkey brain.” (Her mother loved me!”)

Within a few weeks, Blue-eyes, Bev and tennis partner by the name of Jan (who by the way was 6 feet one or two), had all the paperwork necessary to file for a franchise. Game on! This was a girls’ senior softball Little League and was for the ages of 15 through 17. They did all the organization grunt work and by next spring, at sign-up, had enough young ladies to field five teams. They got a bunch of sponsors from the little town adjacent to our bedroom community and bought uniforms and some equipment and got ready for tryouts. The boys’ Little League officialdom was a little less than sanguine about the necessity to share the fields on an equal basis, but it was city property and had to be done, besides these guys were all married and subject to maintaining matrimonial bliss.

I was traveling the weekend of the tryouts, so had no idea of what the caliber of play might be anticipated by these female phenoms. Blue-eyes and Bev teamed up as co-managers of one team, Jan (otherwise known as “Shorty”) drafted her husband, who was about 6 foot seven, an ex-pro football player, and took another team. (He played tennis like a linebacker and you could get permanently physically damaged if he happened to nail you with one of his serves. I always tried to be his partner in doubles, out of fear more than anything else, but even then you could still get seriously hurt. He was at tad wild. But I digress!) The rest of the teams were managed by other “volunteer” husbands and their associated spouses.

I had played slow pitch softball in a church league many years before and it is a considerably different game strategically than hardball. It’s very difficult to whack one of these things out of the ballpark, so you’re relegated to playing what is conceived as “small ball,” with the bunt being one of the primary offensive weapons. Speed is a very important asset. There is no leading off until the pitcher throws the ball. The rest of the rules were pretty much the same. By the way, the concept that a softball is soft is an oxymoron. It’s just bigger, meaning a larger bruise!

Naturally, I was given the opportunity to become the assistant to the assistant coach, otherwise known as ass number two, for hitting. This was an excellent opportunity and the pay was quite good. I went to the first practice about as dubious as I could be about the forthcoming event, not knowing what to expect and quite frankly, anticipating the worst. I know some of these girls were good athletes, tennis and swimming and a few of them had even been on the track team at high school. The issue was, what did they know about baseball? I expected a repeat of my previous experiences of the kids throwing the ball everywhere except where it was intended go and a lot of running around the field chasing the errant throws. Man – – – was I in for a surprise.

There were about 15 of these young ladies, a couple of them were missing and they were mostly in the outfield in twosomes and threesomes warming up. I watched for a few minutes, looking for the telltale signs of gross incompetence, but found very little. There weren’t too many errant balls headed for never-never-land and watching most of them handle the ball I couldn’t say “you throw like a girl,” which of course I wouldn’t have done anyway for fear of being stomped to death by a bunch of aggressive females. They all had gloves, but unfortunately most were too small, the wrong type for softball and you had to assume that they belonged to a brother or someone who played hardball. The girls didn’t seem to know that, and if it bothered them, it didn’t show. Clearly, they have been playing catch or perhaps even baseball with some of the other gender. My first reaction was “hell — these gals are better than some of the teams I coached!”

A cute blonde, blue-eyed lady came over and said, “JJ, get a bat and some balls and let’s see if we can find an infield.” I said, “Yes dear!” I spent the next half-hour hitting ground balls to see if they could throw at, as well as to, first base. I took it easy, hitting relatively soft ground balls. I shortly came to the conclusion that this action was not one of the strong points of our talented debutantes. There were some obvious stars, but for the most part their basic technique was wanting. There were a couple of them that continued to close their eyes and pray about the time the ball got there, and the results were what they termed as “owies,” followed by some unladylike expletives, as they went limping to retrieve the ball. After a while Blue-eyes came over and commented, “JJ, hit the ball harder.” My retort was, “Hey, I don’t want to kill anybody!”

After everybody got a shot at trying to field grounders, Bev came over and picked six or seven likely candidates and started working with them. She had played shortstop in college and knew what she was doing. My oldest daughter was playing first base and was getting a little disgusted, and tired of chasing balls that were flying all over the place, so I asked my middle daughter, who was a little too young to play in the league, to back her up and throw the balls to home plate. Our youngest was in the outfield chasing down some of the wild-ass throws, and getting the ball back to the intended recipient. She had a real good arm, for a five-year-old. This worked out well because it kept her from playing in the dirt. After a while things started looking little bit better.

Finally, “Blondie” came over and told me I could go rest while they tried to find some pitching talent. I said, “Yes dear!” They needed to have at least four pitchers who could find home plate, once in a while. So they rounded up girls who said they could pitch and I sat there expecting to see this slow moving ball closing in on the plate. Big mistake!

The first gal, whose name was CeCe, (never did get to know her real name) did the full softball windup, releasing the ball from her hip with some real speed. It turned out her father had played a lot of softball and taught her how to pitch. She was really very fast, a little wild, but just enough to scare the hell out of an unsuspecting batter. Up came another one named Stacy, and I’ll be darned if she didn’t do almost as well. So, all of a sudden the team had two sharp pitchers. A number of the others could get the ball there, but the differential was immense. Clearly, this was not going to be a slow pitch league.

Blue-eyes had taken the rest of the team into the outfield and was hitting fly balls. The successful execution probability rate was around 50%, but that in itself was encouraging. There were numerous collisions until they got the idea of calling for the ball. Even then, there were some sprawling bodies here and there and I’m sure additional expletive commentary. One thing was impressive, none of them seem to show any fear. There were a couple of the young ladies that would’ve had trouble catching a cold, but with a little work would probably be okay. One of these gals was quite short, but extremely fast and would overrun the ball. Her brother had played for me when I was coaching, and was an extremely good catcher. Since the rules state you couldn’t steal, I suggested to Blue-eyes that this young lady be the catcher, even though she couldn’t catch. I figured I’d get a hold of her brother and have him work with her. Her nickname was “half pint” and she loved it. It really worked out, as you shall later discover, if you continue reading this rather boring dissertation.

The next couple of weeks were spent on practicing and working on the basics. Fun little things would occur — like one of the gals insisted that she play first base because the only glove she had was her brother’s first baseman’s glove. The problem with that idea was she had a tough time catching the ball, even with a basket. Blue-eyes eventually convinced her to be a backup for “half pint” at catcher. One of the other gals, a lefty, was a real good hitter, but she did it right-handed, never from the left side. I thought that was a little strange. She was having a terrible time catching and throwing. I watched her doing other stuff and she seemed to be right-hand dominant. I mentioned this to Blue-eyes, and it turned out that she was right-handed, but thought it would be cool to be left-handed. They got her a right-handed glove and she did great.

There was a late addition to the team who went to a parochial high school, had recently moved here from Texas, so nobody knew her. She was 16, 5 foot 9 or 10, probably weighed 165 pounds, and was without a doubt the best athlete on the team. She had shoulders like a swimmer and could catch, throw, hit a ton and run like a deer. This was the team’s ringer, the teenaged female “Babe Ruth.” The girls nicknamed her “Bubba.”

My role as assistant to the assistant was batting practice, and basically teaching the two forms of bunting — not one of my strong suits. It’s a different game when it comes to hitting. Small ball. Not many of these young hopefuls were going to hit the ball out of the park. So the intent was to work on hitting ground balls and trying to move the runner to the next base. This also involved trying to teach them how to slide without breaking any number of the bones in their petite little bodies. I wanted no part of this and relegated that responsibility to Bev. After watching an exhibition of their sliding acumen, I got out my cell phone and pre-dialed 911.

The team managed to get through the practice sessions without any major disasters, with one exception. The gals were in the outfield shagging balls, and all of a sudden a couple of them screamed and came roaring into the dugout. “There is a huge snake out there!” This, of course, panicked the rest of the girls and everybody headed to the protection of the dugout. Blue-eyes look at me and said, “Well, do something!” My response was an unequivocal, “You gotta be kidding! No way am I about to go out there looking for a snake.” My thoughts were this is probably an escaped python, and I’ll go out there and get swallowed up never to return. Or maybe it’s a rattlesnake; I’ll get bit and die foaming at the mouth like in the movies. I don’t like snakes.

One of the gals stepped forward and said, “I used to have a pet snake. I’ll go look!” My only thought about that was “can you teach a snake to rollover or fetch the paper?” Blue-eyes then told the assistant to the assistant, “You go with her, just in case.” I figured I better do it, but I wasn’t intending to go unarmed. I went to the car, pulled out my golf clubs and selected a three iron, just in case this reptile got overly aggressive. Blue-eyes said, “Why the three iron?” My response was, “You’re right! Maybe a five iron would be more appropriate.”

We went, carefully I might add, into the jungles of the outfield, with me not taking my eyes off the ground where I was about to step. I began to worry that the five iron was an adequate tool if indeed it was a giant python. The young lady found the snake, and informed me it was a gopher snake. Much to my horror, instead of shooing it away, she picked it up and triumphantly walked back to the dugout, with JJ trundling about 10 feet behind her, five iron at the ready, just in case this beast turned on her. The girls in the dugout went berserk. Our little snake charmer informed them that this snake is perfectly harmless and offered to let them hold it, which of course didn’t happen. She took it back to the outfield fence and released it. The only good thing that came from the snake episode was from that time forward, the girls in the outfield were much more alert. I’m still not sure that the three iron wouldn’t have been a better club selection!

The season started! Our daunting debutantes looked like real ballplayers in their spanking new uniforms. That was about the only positive thing that happened that particular day. They got stomped. CeCe, our best pitcher, walked about everything in sight, including the umpire and two spectators sitting in the stands. What few balls were hit by the opposition went through the sieve-like infield and created absolute havoc in the outfield. Nobody could throw the ball, nobody could hit the ball, catching it was, of course, out of the question and everything else was an absolute disaster. The only upside was Bubba hit the ball so hard that she disabled two of the opposition,s infielders. There was no joy in the dugout after the game.

When we got home, Blue- eyes did my normal, her abnormal, backflip into a vodka martini and said “I think we need some work!” My thoughts were, “No! What you really need are three wise men coming from the East.” But the better part of valor kept me from saying that out loud. So, back to the drawing board! More pressure was brought to bear when the assistant to the assistant batting coach, a.k.a. JJ, with questions like, “Why aren’t they hitting?” answered by the old baseball phrase, ”Duh!” The unfortunate facts were they were hitting during practice, but not during the game. I consulted with Dr. Freud, who suggested that they were uptight. He didn’t offer any solution other than a couple of “cold ones” before the game, which I suspected would be inappropriate (for the girls I mean), not for JJ.

The solution presented itself after their third or maybe fourth straight loss by a score equaling two touchdowns and a field goal. The girls were in the dugout, crying in their beer, when Bubba started thrashing around, kicking things, throwing stuff, and then looked at everybody and said in her sweet soft voice and eloquent Texas accent, “I don’t know about y’all, but I’m plum tired of “gettin” my sorry ass kicked!” That did it! The other gals just went hysterical with laughter and good ole Bubba just stood there, tears streaming down her face, not having a clue as to what was so funny. All of girls came out and gave her a big hug and a few mentioning that her sorry ass was right. That was the last game they lost.

The team went on to do some rather interesting things, but this narrative is already too long, so I’ll cover that in a second edition.

Moral of the story – There is no substitute for a good, liberal, parochial education when it comes to expressing oneself at the appropriate moment.