"Keep Your Eye on the Ball!"

29 Aug, 2016

And other ridiculous things you hear at high school baseball games.¹

I watched “Everybody Wants Some!!” recently, and despite the facts that I wasn’t alive in the 1980s and never played college baseball (unless you count intramural softball) it reminded me of growing up on the diamond.

Sure, the movie barely has any actual baseball in it — it deals more with all the wild things that the team gets up to before the school year starts — but that’s beside the point. It is a baseball movie, because baseball has always been about more than just catching and throwing a ball. And baseball certainly has had its insane moments.

Like the 1974 Indians Ten 10-Cent Beer Night, which induced a game-ending riot that saw fans tear up their own stadium and get into a massive brawl with both teams, making the “Major League” Indians look like a well-run and respectable franchise.

Or how about “Disco Demolition Night?” While having fans bring disco records to a game in order to pile them up on the field and then blow them up might sound swell in theory, it didn’t bode so well in practice. This of course, led to another riot. Sure, it may have mercifully begun the downfall of the disco genre, but all-in-all… pretty bad idea.

And we certainly can’t forget Joe Mikulik’s legendary tirade in minor league ball, when he dived onto second base in protest. Then pulled up the second base bag and threw it in protest. Then covered the all of home plate with dirt in protest. Then threw a handful of bats onto the field in protest. Then brought a water bottle out and cleaned off home plate in hypocritical protest — all while the home PA team channeled Tom Hanks screaming, “There’s no crying in baseball!” in the background.

The point I’m trying to get at here is this: baseball can be crazy. But most of us never encounter those fabled moments. What we do deal with are parents, who can be even more batty than all the YouTube-worthy manager tirades in the world.

With that, let’s take a trip around the bases to discuss the most ridiculous things you are sure to hear at any given high school baseball game.

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“Come on Matt, just throw strikes!”

The beauty of this line is that it can come from anyone at the ballpark. It can come from Matt’s mom, his coach, the catcher, or even Matt’s inner monologue as he continues to fail at the most basic task of a pitcher.

The problem with this seemingly supportive bellow of encouragement is that it’s not encouraging at all. It’s synonymous with the most fatal and savage of all Southern slights (“Oh, bless your heart!”) in that it sounds nice and reassuring, but it’s actually a straight-up insult.

Of course Matt is trying to throw strikes! What do you think, he’s up there sandbagging, just waiting for the perfect moment to not walk someone? No, that is actually not what he is trying to do.

Statements that also fit into this model include:

• “Keep your eye on it!”
• “Get a hit!”
• “You gotta catch it before you throw it!”

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“Tie goes to the runner!”

This sentiment is universally shouted by a fan of the hitting team, at the umpire, after the umpire has just called a member of the hitting team out at first base.

The problem, though, is that the sentiment is categorically false. There’s nothing in any rule book that says a tie goes to the runner, similar to the fact that there’s no such thing as a tie in baseball. This is baseball, not soccer.

The base runner either reaches the bag before the the first baseman catches the ball, or he reaches the bag after the first baseman catches the ball. There is no middle ground. There is no gray area here — literally, it’s a white bag on a white baseline.

The idea of the tie going to the runner is similar to participation awards: Both are dumb.

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“He was up to 88–89 this summer, hits 90 occasionally when he really rears back and needs it.”

There’s some beauty in this one, I have to admit. About 80 percent of the time, this statement comes from the father of whoever it is that’s currently on the mound and is actually throwing anywhere from 73 to 82 miles per hour.

The other 20 percent of the time it comes from the kid who’s throwing anywhere from 73 to 82 miles per hour.

But what you have to admire about this statement — before you laugh about it later — is that there was some tact that went into it.

The father of the imaginary 90-mph hurler knows that 90 mph is the magic number that shows you’re no joke. He also knows there’s no chance that anyone watching his son right now will believe that he’s throwing that hard.

So, the first step is to start just under the magic number (“88–89”), throw in some past tense (“He was”) and add a qualifier (“occasionally”) for good measure.

Voilà, the completely made up story about your son’s velocity is now completely believable.

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The person who talks throughout the entire game to anyone and everyone within earshot but somehow never manages to talk about what’s going on on the field, or even baseball in a general.

As you can probably tell, this isn’t a phrase that someone shouts, but a role that is fulfilled at every high school baseball game that has ever been played.

I know I’ve already picked on Matt’s mom, but this role is more often than not filled by another mom. We’ll call her “Nice Mom.” The danger of Nice Mom is that she operates in a similar fashion to the sirens in Greek mythology. Here’s a refresher if you managed to get out of reading The Odyssey in eighth grade:

“In Greek mythology, the Sirens were beautiful yet dangerous creatures who lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island”. — The ever-trustworthy Wikipedia

Nice Mom is menacing, but you would never know that from looking at her or talking to her — unless you’d been warned.

She truly is nice. She’s arguably the nicest person that comes to the games: always welcoming you with a wide smile, offering to buy you snacks from the concession stand, and routinely carrying her 17-year-old son’s equipment bag to and from the dugout for him.

She seems nice, you think to yourself, and no one is sitting near her, so I might as well.

Before long though, you realize that this aggressive kindness is just a mirage. When the second inning is dwindling down, you start to tire of keeping the back-and-forth of the clothes conversation alive.

As the top of the fourth comes around, you know entirely too much about the petty drama that is the booster club and you’re also starting to wonder how much you really need to know about the latest relationship rumors of the high school junior class.

By the time the seventh inning hits you, you realize that you’ve completely missed watching the entire game and you are thanking the Lord that real nine-inning games aren’t a thing yet. You also now know why no one was sitting beside her. You get up to walk away only to hear Nice Mom leave you with one last chilling remark:

“See you tomorrow! I’ll save you a seat, I like to get here a few hours early to make sure everyone has snacks and a Gatorade! Let me know if you want to volunteer!”

You take off running to your car while you still can, leaving all of the ridiculousness of high school baseball behind you.

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