Baseball DIY

Last night, three of my fellow St. Louis Unions (a vintage base ball team that plays by the rules of 1862) and I met at our home field to toss the ball around and remind ourselves of just how far 90 feet is. I'm here to tell you, it's really far.

Let me just say that playing catch and taking some swings gave me such a fucking high that I'm going to type "fucking" in my blog because I feel that it is warranted. I missed the game so much, and I am so excited that it is returning. MLB teams have opened camps in Florida and Arizona, the World Baseball Classic (more on that later) starts on March 3, and even Sportscenter features the occasional non-Bonds baseball segment now. It's just fucking fantastic.

As for how our practice went: On a scale of 5 to 27, I'd give it an 18. It was Doc, Scoops, Ricochet, and I (my nickname's "Buttermilk" for reasons which I have yet to make up). I'd pay Scoops money to have him train me; he is an honest-to-Zeus ballplayer. He plays shortstop, so I moved over to second base from short last season. That's as it should be. We all made our share of boots and blunders, but we also made some plays that would make you think we'd been working hard all winter (which I think is actually the case for Scoops).

My goal this season is to lead the team in OPS; I finished third last season. I don't know how well I can trust my batting practice performance last night, but at minimum it was encouraging. We used an aluminum bat and soft baseballs for BP, but I still managed to crush a good number into the garden (19th century speak for "deep in the outfield"). I think with a heavier bat and a harder ball, those would have gone even farther. I need to work more on going to the opposite field, especially since we have a short porch now that we've re-oriented our field.

My favorite part of the evening was just standing around talking with the guys. When you're on a team with guys or girls you like, it's just really hard to beat.

And if you win a lot of games, that's just frosting.