Why I Never Got A Kellogg's Card.....Part 1

By age 10 I was a tall left-handed thrower.  So that ruled out playing 2B, SS, 3B and catcher.  I never played those spots in organized games.  First base tended to be my home from age 8 to 12 since coaches liked to put tall lefties there.

There were two problems with that.  First, two or three years in a row I ended up on the team with the kid who threw the hardest in the league.  While that was good since I didn't have to bat against him, it meant that when he wasn't pitching he was throwing the ball to me from shortstop.  I just checked my hands and there seem to be no more marks from those days but I can still feel the pain of not having a first-basemen's glove that would have helped protect my hand.

The second problem - I was better at running on the field than standing still.  Every thing was okay except for one thing.  When a popup was hit directly too me I had problems catching it.

When we played baseball one-on-one at night or when no one else was around, we played behind Scottsdale Park in a game that I think was call one-on-one or fast-pitch.  A strike zone was drawn on the building and a rubber coated ball was used.  I hated this game since I was horrible at pitching.  When a pitcher gave up a hit, he had to go chase it.  Lots of chasing for me - there's another reason I became a runner.  I think there were specific markers that signified single, double, triple or homer but I can't remember that part.

So a shrewd coach decided when I was 12 to have me pitch twice.  The memories are unclear but a few things are still easy to recall.  First, I didn't retire the side and I remember being put back at first base both times.  Second, a kid that I didn't get along with got a double off of me and proceeded to heckle me quietly from second base.  I heard he went to reform school.  Should I feel good or bad about that?

Here is my best guess at my career pitching stats -

G - 2
IP - 1.0  -- hey I got a few guys out
H - 5
R - 4
BB - 0 -- everyone knew they could hit off me
K - 0 -- have you been reading this post?
ERA - 36.00
Kids sent to reform school - 1

Maybe if I struck that kid out he'd have gone to Harvard.  Maybe if I hit him with a pitch he'd have been in prison, so I guess it worked out somewhere in between.  I do know that if we have a Durkin Park Little League reunion he might want to borrow some of Barry Bonds' protective batting armor.