About Flagpole. (Athens, Ga.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (June 14, 2000)
Quit Throwing like A Girl! a/*5 c tortured by my father as a W Q S child. He kept telling me that I threw like a girl, let me just clear things up and tell you right now that I am a girl. But in my house, throwing like a girl was a cardinal sin. Right up there with eating meat on Fridays during Lent Just as bad as sending your brother to the ER by throwing toys at his head. My relatively sweet, mild and unassuming father is a baseball lover and an above-average athlete. He is also a very competitive man. Dad was a fabulous coach, but when teaching his own children he had less patience. When I started playing fast pitch soft ball, around age 7 or 8, my sister and I would stand in the yard and play catch with my dad. He would shout and show us how to throw with jerky, exaggerated motions, screaming the whole time, "QUIT THROWING UKE A GIRL." Our normal answer in between sniffles was, "But Dad, I AM a girl." Sniff, sniff. I swear to God, it was some thing out of the Great Santini. Years later, the result of my childhood trauma is a pretty neat, whipriike. slightly sidearm, throw. My sister throws pretty well too. As another credit to my dad, despite our weekly humiliation in the front yard, my sister and I both love baseball and our dad dearly. In fact, my whole family loves baseball. Bull Durham is one of our favorite movies. During a voice-over in the movie, Susan Sarandon quotes Walt Whitman, "I see great things in Baseball. It's our game, the American game." Never a truer statement was said. I went with a work group to a Braves game last year. Among our bunch was a visitor from South Africa. Explaining the game to her topk about 120 seconds. Let's face it Baseball is a pretty simple game. Even a beauty queen can understand what's going on during a baseball game. For the record, my sister was a beauty queen and an excellent first baseman. During my last visit to The Ted, we sat in good seats, ate boiled peanuts from the parking lot and drank overpriced Budweiser tallboys. The South African was so excited to be at an American Baseball game, and that evening there was much laughter and cheering for the Braves. When we retired to a bar later for a quick nightcap, the visitor confessed that she didn't see what the big deal about baseball was, l guess if you compare baseball to soccer or rugby or cricket, it's got a lot less action. At South African cricket matches, shots have been bred. H you go to a soccer game in South America, you might as weQ leave your last will and testament by your bedside,; Those soccer stadiums tend to go up in fUmrn when the spectators riot, Rugby games police offi cers stationed throughout the crowds to pre vent the fans from fighting each other. Baseball has its share of loudmouths with poor manners (Rocker) and there is that pen chant for spitting that is kind of gross. But at least there are no crazies choking coaches and no linebackers being tried for murder. (Of course, now that I've bragged on the overall good behavior of baseball players, some dis gruntled rookie will probably firebomb a church in Mississippi.) I will repeat myself: baseball is a pretty simple game. But the nuances of the game are what make it spectacular. The columns of statistics, the trivia and the minutiae— all these things endear the game to me: the announcers as they chatter away on the radio and the scores of people sitting in the bleachers with radios clamped to their heads so as not to miss a single bit of wisdom from the home team announcers. The national anthem especially moves me. It reminds me of Olympic medallists and World Series uniforms and swim meets. If you don't arrive at the stadium by the national anthem, you have invoked the bad karma gods on your team. It's like missing the 25 minutes of previews before the movie starts. It's like showing up late for a pedicure and telling them to polish your toes and forget about the cuticles. Basically, it's just wrong to miss the Star Spangled Banner. In the summer of 1984, 1 was nine, and I was convinced that the last line of the anthem was written for Atlanta's baseball team: "the land of the free and the home of the Braves" The more I thought about it, I realized that no way did Francis Scott Key write a song for those losing Braves. That was a time in our no t-tor»-distant past when the ushers let you sit anywhere in Atlanta-Fulton County stadium, since it was practically empty anyway. Now that the Braves are better, you have to sit in your assigned seat, and it takes about $6,000 to take a family of four to a Braves game. There are still redeeming moments at baseball games and reasons to blow $6,000 at the stadium. Those better moments happen when you see the earnest looks on ballplayers' faces; they are honestly upset that they have just struct out, or they are honestly happy at a well-executed bunt, or they are honestly proud of the base they just stole. Those earnest looks remind me of the child like honesty of kids playing little league. And that's what is great about baseball: it reminds us all of our childhoods, I think that there is-a lot of joy left in baseball. Even though I cried a lot when my dad taught me to play ball, X still remember the joy. Hteofe Utk*on the land of the free and the home of the Braves.” The 2000 ' PUtfSPf}l>H □jtlnons W SEE PAGE 221 FLAGPOLE is looking for a Full-Time Advertising Sales Person. Base + coamlsstoa Par and Benefits Sales Experience and Car Required. Please send resume and cover letter to: Flagpole Magazine, Attn: Alicia Niektes P.a Sox 1027 Athens, GA 30603 or ads@ftagpote.com M? phone etuis pkws*. APARTMENTS Don't be left out in the cold... 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