Tag Archives: baseball

How I Listened Myself onto My College Baseball Team

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I played baseball when I was younger but didn’t make the high school team. I tried out for second base then but wasn’t very good. I couldn’t hit all that well and my second base proficiency was, well, second rate.

I tried all the positions growing up – pitcher, catcher, infielder and outfielder. Quite frankly, I may have decided on second base because it was the least dangerous. But I remembered that when I was a catcher in little league and elementary school, I’d won some accolades. I had a decent arm and good hands, and I felt less inhibited with all that gear (aka, the “tools of ignorance”) on.

Baseball-Field-at-Home1

When I decided to go to college, I had three goals: I wanted to (1) go away to school, (2) get my bachelor’s degree, and (3) play baseball (and not necessarily in that order). I was intent on accomplishing all three.

I was not very studious in high school My grades weren’t that good; somewhat miraculously, however, I got accepted at Loyola College in Baltimore. I had barely survived the first fall semester, when, all of a sudden, here came spring, when a young man’s thoughts turn to … well, in my case, baseball.

I tried out for the varsity team as a catcher, taking my lumps along the way. The pitchers were out to impress and they were throwing hard. Because it was February and cold outside, we were indoors. The other catchers handling the pitchers were catching without a mask, but after I’d had my nose bloodied a few times, I swallowed my pride and wore one.

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My hitting had improved the previous summer while playing softball, but I hadn’t witnessed any curve balls in that league. Here I would encounter plenty.

As I stood in the on-deck circle during an intra-squad scrimmage that day, my eyes met those of “Walt,” another prospect whom I knew from the dorm. He’d observed that “John” threw the ball right down the middle. I concurred, having seen his repertoire of pitches in the gym while catching him.

When it was my turn to bat, I dug in, remembering what Walt had told me. It was late in the game and my dream was on the line. Sure enough, one of the first pitches I saw was a fastball right down Broadway. I hammered it out into left field, driving in several runs in the process. It was at a crucial point in the game. Not only did I surprise myself, but I surprised the coach as well, who now had a harder time deciding whom to let go.

After the game, I passed all the defensive drills the coach put me through and made the team. In all honesty, it was the advice Walt gave me, and my putting it to good use, that enabled me to realize my dream of playing college baseball.

Anyway, I’ll be giving a listening workshop at various American Executive Centers in August. Come on out and join us. To register for it, go here: http://www.americanexecutivecenters.com/summer-learning-seminars/

The Streets of Baltimore

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Donte Hickman CNN

Now that some of the dust has settled in Baltimore, I thought I would add my two cents. I went to school there for several years, so I do have some experience with the city.

People ask me if I recognize the buildings they’re showing on television. First of all, I tell them, it was almost 40 years ago since I lived there. Secondly, my initial recollection was that I didn’t venture off campus much (it turned out I didn’t have to to get mugged – but that’s a story for a different day).

I started to think about the times I left what was then called Loyola College of Maryland’s campus. I left to go to Alonzo’s on Cold Spring Lane for a bite to eat and Jerry’s Belvedere for a pint after a sports event. I remembered that I would also hitchhike to Towson to get my haircut. I can’t recall the name of the guy that cut what was a whole lot more hair than I have now, but I know he did a great job.

And then I thought about all the running I did on the streets of Baltimore. Since I didn’t have a car – and it was BG (before Google), I pretty much knew where the train station was and where the campus was in relation to it – but that’s about it. If memory serves me correctly, Loyola’s baseball team, after we got the heave-ho from the soccer field on campus, would practice on diamonds all over North Baltimore. Oh, and I also remember playing midnight flag football in the Inner Harbor back when it was just being built.

So I suppose I was somewhat familiar with parts of the city. But East Baltimore was and is as distant to me as certain parts of Philly are today. I just never go there.

The Inner City

The penile blood vessels are around 1/3rd the size of arteries tadalafil generic of the heart. Across the room, you sildenafil online canada see a very attractive woman. Fiction: Erectile dysfunction condition is “all in viagra tablets 100mg the mind”. prescription du viagra It has sildenafil citrate embedded in gel like edible structure. I suppose in a multitude of ways Baltimore is a city like many others. It has rampant crime, unemployment and juvenile delinquency. There is racial tension there as there is in many other places around the country. I don’t want to pretend to know a whole lot about what it’s like living in the inner city.

But I am encouraged by the story of Donte Hickman, pastor of the Southern Baptist Church. Fire destroyed his senior citizen center in the unrest there last week. The development included plans for 61 units of affordable senior housing, workforce development and a place for teenagers to go. While the center had been scheduled to open in November, he now has set his sights on opening it in the spring of 2016.

Growing up, he was expelled from three high schools, living a rough life. It seemed as if he would become just another statistic.

Then he turned his life around. He passed the GED exam without preparation or success beyond the tenth grade. In 1994 he earned his bachelor’s degree. In ’97 he earned his Masters of Divinity. And this Saturday, May 8th, will mark nine years since he earned his Doctor of Divinity degree from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. He’s doing some amazing things.

Options

I don’t believe a Marshall Plan for inner cities, as Tom Brokaw suggested, is the way to go. The answer is not about throwing money at the situation, as evidenced by the revelation that Baltimore received over $1 billion in state aid and yet hasn’t been able to improve the plight of its disadvantaged citizens.

Donte Hickman is living proof that with faith, parental guidance and an inner determination, there’s hope. And those are three things that all the money in the world can’t buy.

Why does Coca-Cola seem to go better with controversy?

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Two controversial baseball players come to mind immediately when I think of Coca-Cola: Ty Cobb and Richie Allen.

The Georgia Peach

Born in Narrow, Georgia, Tyrus Raymond “Ty” Cobb was as adversarial as they come, not only for his style of play, but also because he deplored the integration of the game.

Three weeks before his major league debut, Cobb’s mother accidentally shot and killed his father with a shotgun. Years later, Ty would attribute his aggressive playing style to the fact that his father never saw him play a big league game.

He had a lifetime batting average of .367, which still stands today as the best of all time. He played the game so hard that when he was dying, he would swallow a bottle of bourbon and a quart of milk in an effort to ease the relentless pain.

When Cobb died in 1961, his investment portfolio included lucrative early stakes in companies like Coca-Cola and General Motors that were large enough to be worth the modern equivalent of hundreds of millions (and potentially billions) of dollars today.

Richie (Dick) Allen

The other day I was listening to the Phillies-Nationals game on the car radio. The announcer described a gargantuan home run that Bryce Harper hit to straightaway center field.

Richie Allen BOO
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It reminded me of the way Richie Allen’s home runs used to be described. Allen’s name came up a few weeks ago and I’ve been thinking about him since. Five months ago he finished one vote shy of making baseball’s prestigious Hall of Fame. He played in Philadelphia, St. Louis, L.A. and Chicago.

He was traded for Curt Flood (among others) who refused to play in Philadelphia, forever changing the game of baseball, by being instrumental in largely overturning the reserve clause.

From Wampum, Pennsylvania, Allen was a seven-time All Star who won the ’64 Rookie of the Year award as well as the 1972 American League MVP for the Chicago White Sox. He was as imposing a hitter as Bob Gibson was as a pitcher (Gibson once refused to leave the mound when Roberto Clemente broke his leg with a line drive). Willie Mays said he never saw anyone hit the ball harder than Allen.

In 1965, Allen hit a home run off Ray Washburn which cleared Connie Mack Stadium’s Coca-Cola sign in left center field. The ball was estimated to have travelled 539 feet. It prompted Willie “Pops” Stargell to declare “Now I know why they (Phillies fans) boo Richie all the time. When he hits a home run, there’s no souvenir.”

After leaving Philadelphia, he asked that people call him “Dick” because Richie, he said, was a little boy’s name. He was also an R&B singer with a band called the “Groovy Grooves.” His record label called him “Rich.”

Attached is an image of him and his “word art.” He also wrote “Coke” around first base. The commissioner told him to stop writing in the dirt. The next day he wrote “Why?” and “No.” He also wrote “Mom” saying she was the only one that could tell him what to do.

Slogans

It’s interesting that both these players will be forever sketched on my mind when I think of Coca-Cola. When Cobb broke into the big leagues, the beverage company’s slogan was “Coca-Cola revives and sustains.” When Allen made it to the majors, their slogan was “Things go better with Coke.”