The Don't Blink Zone: Fat Baseball Players

"Like they say, it ain't over till the fat guy swings." -Phillies catcher Darren Daulton on stocky first baseman John Kruk

In my efforts to step back and savor what is right in front of me, I realized it doesn't all need to be life changing or altering revelations. You know, some things that you take for granted probably have always made you smile, but maybe you just never took the time to slow down and REALIZE you were actually smiling. In that spirit, I have taken to carrying a small notebook with me to jot down some of these times when I catch myself grinning. In doing so, something came into focus. That there are many SIMPLE things that give me satisfaction that just weren't obvious to me....funny how one's definition of "obvious" changes when you slow down and take the time to recognize it. So, welcome to the "Don't Blink Zone", a place where I will share some of my newly apparent simple pleasures.

#1 - Fat Baseball Players

I just returned from a long weekend in Clearwater, Florida where I experienced my own little piece of heaven....baseball spring training. There are some things that I have ALWAYS recognized as making me happy to be at a ballgame: sunshine, green grass, heckling an ump, hot dogs, beer and yes...Crackerjack (by the way, the lack of "cool" Crackjack prizes anymore does NOT make me smile). But I realized that there was something else that gave me IMMENSE, no pun intended, satisfaction at a ballgame. Something that I was able to identify that gave me a quiet, and even a little unnerving sense of happiness at the ball field....fat baseball players.

Why is it that on the rare occasion a rotund ballplayer emerges from the dugout...I find myself smiling? Just to be clear, not laughing in a disrespectful sense, but more of a satisfied chuckle. Now that I look back, I have to admit that fat ballplayers have ALWAYS made me happy. I can even say I have an all-time favorite plus-sized model...John Kruk of the Phillies, and now of ESPN's "Baseball Tonight". But I never really identified WHY it was that an overweight major league baseball player would put a smile on my face. Seriously, shouldn't the pretty boys of baseball, the Derek Jeters and Chase Utleys, be responsible for the grins on female fans across America? And wouldn't a chuckle at an overweight person be considered rude in most other venues? Mullet aside, the Krukker made me smile because he was an anomaly. He didn't look like an athlete, he certainly didn't act like an athlete, he didn't even profess to be an athlete. Yet there he was, occupying first base for the Philadelphia Phillies as a founding member of the 1990's "Macho Row", and pulling in a hefty salary doing so. It was as if his presence on the diamond was a way to thumb his nose at the establishment, defy the odds, and even proclaim "I ain't no athlete lady, I'm a baseball player". Hey, he even titled his autobiography that (a SMART mullet headed, fat ballplayer at THAT! I might have been in love).

So, while in Clearwater watching a ballgame, I took a few moments to ponder WHY an overweight ballplayer might be the reason for that grin on my face. And this was my conclusion that I jotted down in my handy notebook. A fat baseball player gives me a sense of joy because he defies the odds, he is successful at something that society thinks he shouldn't be successful at, he breaks the mold of how we view "athletes", he is the proverbial under dog. As if this isn't enough, he pulls this all off while rocking a pair of unforgiving polyester baseball pants that no overweight man should probably wear in public, let alone in front of a national viewing audience. These realizations give me hope. Give me motivation. Give me a sense that anything is possible. And it definetely gives me a smile. Simple pleasures aside, please don't ask me to share the prize in my bag of Crackerjack, allow me to loudly educate the ump on his missed calls, let's PLAY BALL, and always remember it's never over til the fat guy swings!

Don't Blink,
K

Baseball, Bums and Bliss

"I like to look down on a field of green and white, a summertime land of Oz, a place to dream. I've never been unhappy in a ballpark."
Jim Murray, LA Times

Spring...the season of new beginnings. The heck with daffodils waking and poking thru the ground, I'm focused more on bats coming out of hibernation and poking hits thru the infield. Yep, I'm packing my bags for a long weekend in Clearwater. Spring training baseball and sunshine. For me, there is nothing that evokes spring better than the sound of a wood bat hitting the rawhide and the smell of fresh grass intertwined with the aroma of popcorn. It has been said that whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball. Those who know yours truly, say the same about me. When it comes to baseball, I know more than the average Joe (with apologies to my husband who altho is a "Joe" is by no means "average"). I have more than once caught an unsuspecting man by surprise with my baseball savvy. This is due in part to my above-average "non-Joe" of a dad.

If there is one consistent in my life, where I can totally concentrate on the here and now and block everything else life throws my way, it is a baseball game. Nine innings of total bliss where the clock is obsolete, and I am completely honed in and focused. The perfect combination of individualism and team work, the attributes that define America also define it's homegrown sport. Baseball is forever linked in my mind to childhood, to a blue transistor radio, and to collecting the entire 1971 Phillies starting line up in photos with each fill-up at the local Sunoco station (it was a happy day when dad finally brought home 1st baseman Deron Johnson's picture for me to tape up on my bedroom wall). It is also linked eternally to the sentiment "those bums", which I would hear my dad spit out everytime the Phillies blew a game....which apparently was the entire decade of the 1970's!

I find it quite funny, in a cosmic sense, that my dad was "blessed" with a family of three DAUGHTERS! I am talking about a former ballplayer himself who was never able to play a game of catch with a son, debate the pros and cons of the designated hitter, discuss the art of calling pitches, the beauty of a perfectly timed double play, the folly of a suicide squeeze, teach his son how to keep an official score card or how to break in a catcher's mitt. I'm sure he thought the love of the game would be unrequited by his girls. I never even played ANY sport. The only thing I could catch was a fire baton...albeit in a minuscule outfit while wearing knee high white boots. Come to think of it, my dad should have appreciated the fact that no outfielder could catch a fly ball under similar circumstances with such finesse!

But come to love the game I did. It is probably only within the last couple of years I have been able to identify the reasons WHY I love the game and make the connection to my dad. Dad was a police officer and later a District Justice. Growing up, his world was black and white with very few shades of grey to link the two extremes. You were either wrong..or you were right (I was usually wrong, by the way). I have been accused of the same color-blindness by my own kids. In reality, he was a perfect ump in disguise as my dad. The authority and decisiveness he would use to make his calls on my actions might as well have been "you're OUTTA here!" ejections from the game. And just like you never show up an ump on the field by arguing calls...the same went for my dad once he made a call, lest I be benched indefinetely.

Just like my dad, baseball is a thing of beauty due to it's precise and honest nature. It's a dramatic game, a thinking man's game played out under strict guidelines and confines with clear decisions. Baseball encompasses everything that life does. Crime and punishment, cause and effect, motive and result, ying and yang. If life were only as simple and easy as strike or ball, fair or foul, safe or out, black or white. There is an easiness of order that I find comforting. No matter how complex or complicated my life might be at a given moment, I can count on baseball to be a calm oasis and a place to re-focus. I view my dad in the same light. Funny how it can take a long time to realize something that is so obvious. Baseball is a sport of fathers and sons.....and the occasional lucky daughter.

Don't Blink,
K

Father Knows Best

"Trust me friend a hundred years goes faster than you think...so don't blink"

Yes, Kenny Chesney might claim ownership of that sentiment via his lyrics...but in my heart, Mr. "He Thinks His Tractor's Sexy" really should give credit where credit is due....to my dad. Dad, like most parents, would probably get immense pleasure out of hearing me finally admit that "Yes pops...you were RIGHT!" Especially considering the number of times I rolled my eyes when he would warn me as a teenager and young adult that "Time flies too fast", "Stop trying to grow up so quickly Kathy" and the infamous "SOMEDAY you'll understand". Well, that SOMEDAY is TODAY and incredulously I find that not only am I apparently a country song cliche', but when I look in a mirror I somehow morphed into a twenty-five year old girl disguised in a fifty year old body. My tall, handsome and imposing dad has just moved into a retirement village with my mom. Altho still handsome, he doesn't seem quite so tall and imposing anymore. And I still have a problem wrapping my brain around the fact that I am not only the parent of three kids.... but two of them are the same age as the girl I feel is trapped on the inside! I am truly either a biological anomaly...or the poor victim of a practical joke.

I am most definitely the product of my father, both in the good and the "could be improved" categories. This alone could provide enough material for blog fodder. But for today, I find inspiration in a single sentiment of my dad's. For as much as I have in my life, I do believe there could be more if I start listening to my dad. Step back for a moment and truly took in the "today" instead of always looking towards the tomorrows. So my goal at fifty years old is a simple one....to finally listen to my dad, because father does know best. And okay, I will also listen to Kenny (even tho I have yet to find a tractor remotely appealing...let alone sexy), "So I've been tryin' ta slow it down...I've been tryin' to take it in. In this here today, gone tomorrow world we're livin in....."

Don't Blink,
K