LIFE CHANGE UP? SAW-WING BATTER, BATTER, BATTER

 

See a fat pitch down the middle and get hold of it.

After that they all look like a fat pitch down the middle.

All you need to do is stand in and swing for the fences T-ball style.

That’s baseball, but how does it connect to your busy life?

Like baseball, your life has no clock, no time limit. You just play until it’s over.

Sometimes a ball game feels like a lifetime by the last pitch, but real fans hang in.

Besides winners and losers, baseball reveals human nature, as in, “Man, that was stupid.”

This is where the Life Change Up happens, but first let’s look at The Game

How do grown men who’ve played the game all their lives suddenly develop an aversion to the ball?

Consider former Yankee second basemen Steve Sax and Chuck Knoblauch. Though a decade apart, both got the yips, the sort of play that makes every Little League wash-out feel better.

Chuck had what they called the Steve Sax Syndrome.

Yips? They lost the ability to make the throw to first. From second base. It happens in sports.

I played a poor second base with a hurt arm, but never shanked a throw into the stands and hit someone’s mom in the head like Knoblauch did to Keith Olbermann’s momma.

Golf great Tiger Woods got the yips after a career that seemed unbeatable. Except where his wife was involved.

A Life Change Up Relates Best To Baseball?

Football doesn’t work due to the name. Football, like a foot to the balls?

No one needs one of those.

Baseball is pure like that. Players wear their protective cup not in fear of a foot to the balls, but a ball to the balls.

Again, no one got time for that.

If you stay down on grounders often enough you’ll get the ball everywhere but your mitt at least once. The bad bounce hits everybody.

We need to show sympathy for the bad bounce, but it’s okay to laugh at a hitter chopping at a change up.

Swinging at a change up is a choice, a bad bounce isn’t

There’s a tall, whip-armed, lefty out on the mound throwing inside smoke past the other sides’ best hitter.

It’s LW in Reedsport doing what he did every time he walked out on the diamond.

LW had all the tools, the heat, the junk, along with a nice drop ball he applied to special occasions.

Pitching against the other team’s best hitter? Here it comes.

First he threw past the guy with the catcher’s mitt popping like you’ve never heard.

The batter puts on his impatient show. He stretches with the bat aimed toward the mound, fixes his tiny helmet, adjusts his cup, scoots his feet and shakes his butt digging in.

A home run hitter prepping for his trot.

The next pitch looks like a fat one down the middle. It acts like a fattie. No wicked hook, no smoke, just a dose of what the doctor ordered for an anemic at bat.

Except at the end of pitch the ball took a dive and bounced off the plate. It broke every physics rule of a body in motion staying in motion and took what looked like a sharp right angle down.

Against every fiber in his body, from his eyes that saw the ball dip, to his brain that understood not to swing on a pitch that bounces off home plate, to his coiled body ready to explode, he swung.

But it wasn’t a normal cut. He swung after the ball passed and nearly fell down. Worst at bat for him, funniest at bat memory of a lifetime.

Life change up #1

“Please step away from the car. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have a right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.”

Saw-wing batter, batter, batter.

Life change up #2

“We need to make an appointment. The tests results have come back. Is there someone you could bring with you.”

Life change up #3

“You can pick up your things Wednesday morning at 6:30 in the garage. Security will have a box for you.”

Saw-wing batter.

Life change up #4

“We need to talk.”

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