Little ironic that the video (below) popped up on one of my sports blog sites a day after I was just thinking about the first time that I had a curve ball thrown to/at me. I was riding the bike around the old neighborhood here in Piney Point with the Grandkids, when one of them commented about a dog in the yard of a home we rode by. Turns out that where the dog sat, was where home plate used to be years ago when there was a baseball field there.
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| Black Lawn Jockey is Now Where the Pitcher’s Mound Used to Be |
When I was in Little League playing for the Ridge Orioles many years ago, we came to Piney Point to play the Piney Point Red Sox on a ball field in this very spot which is located a block up the street from where I now reside. I remember thinking how cool a ball field it was because it faced the river which you could see from home plate. (If you look thru the tree above the bed of the green pickup truck you can still see the river.)
I flashed back to Little League and being at the plate facing Donnie Garner the Red Sox’s pitcher. Donnie Garner threw a fast ball first pitch which I let go by but then dug in to be ready for his next pitch.
Donnie wound up with the same motion, but then threw a pitch that came right at me. Like the kid in the video, I thought that the first curve ball I ever saw was going to nail me. Of course it broke right over the corner of the plate for a called strike while I stood there thinking “What was that?!” My only solace is that I was so frozen at the plate that I didn’t have time to react as this young man did in the video; the fact that I almost peed my pants is another matter altogether.