The Triple

I hit four triples in eighteen games as a high school junior, a positively Wilsonian pace that may lead to the assumption that I was fast. This assumption would be false. While I suppose it could be said that I had something that, at times, vaguely resembled speed, the main reason for all those three-baggers was our home field. Unlike the varsity field, which was completely enclosed (though with relatively small dimensions that once led a visiting player to lament that he could have hit twenty homeruns a season if he played half his games there), the jay-vee field I played on as a junior had just a short section of chain-link fence located three hundred-plus feet from home plate in straightaway right field. Anything hit to the left of right-center became subject to playground rules: run as far as you can and hope they don’t throw you out. There was a lot more Hank Greenberg than Carl Crawford in my triples.

Swinging from the left side of the plate, I was a pull hitter, but not a dead-pull hitter; the majority of my blasts – and as the high school version of a Quad-A player, I hit a few that season – traveled to right-center, just missing the homerun fence and rolling near a set of practice football goalposts several hundred feet from home plate. Though I would have loved to stand there in the box and admire my handiwork, the act of ball striking bat was just the beginning. Once that happened, I still had to run hard out of the box, moving just as fast as my short little legs would carry me (as a sophomore, one of my teammates watched me run and christened me “Scooter” because my feet barely left the ground), and try to figure out how far I could make it. Often, the result was a double. But on four very special occasions, everything fell into place, and either my coach or myself thought that I could take three. We were always right: I was never thrown out at third.

Of those four triples, I can remember two with some clarity. The first was one that I’ve written about before; it came in the middle innings, broke up a no-hitter, ignited an eight-run rally, caused my father to say out loud that he was proud of me (the only time I remember that happening), and ranks as one of my finest athletic achievements. I have some pretty good reasons for remembering it as well and as fondly as I do.

The second triple, I remember for a somewhat different reason. That was the one where I almost inadvertently castrated the opposing third baseman.

The game situation, unfortunately, has been almost completely lost to memory. All I can recall is that we were playing Pinkerton Academy and I hit one deep to right-center. I want to say that we were way ahead at the time and I didn’t need to try for the extra base, but that might be wrong. Pinkerton was usually pretty good; it’s hard to imagine us beating up on them. I’m almost positive that my coach tried to hold me up at second; if that first thought holds true, that we had a big lead, this would make sense – he wasn’t the sort of coach who derived any great joy from humiliating an opponent. Whether I’m right or wrong, though, it’s likely that he threw up his hands in the international gesture for “Stop running now or you will likely be out” mainly because if I did not stop running there, I would likely be out. It makes sense, in retrospect.

Now, I’m pretty open about the fact that I am not a fast thinker. Give me a few minutes to let my brain relax and puzzle through a problem on its own, without outside interference or pressure, and I’ll often arrive at a logical conclusion. Ask me to do the same in a few seconds and my brain closes the blinds, locks the doors, and hands the keys to my instincts, which are no better than George Costanza’s.

As luck would have it, baseball requires some snap decisions. It had burned me more than once in the past, often on plays in the outfield (when the centerfielder would call me off a fly ball, I’d hear him shouting, but my brain wouldn’t clue my body in to the change of plans fast enough to react appropriately), but we were about to take it to a whole new level, my brain and I.

A year or so before, during offseason football workouts, I had run a forty-yard dash in five seconds flat. The distance between second and third base, of course, is ninety feet, or thirty yards. Using some sort of math something-or-other, I figured out that it should have taken me roughly 3.75 seconds to get from one base to the next, not counting the fact that I had a full head of steam rounding second, the wide turn around the bag, or the slide that would surely be necessary to get me safely into third. So let’s round it off and call it four seconds.

About halfway down the line – two seconds into this mess, two seconds to go – I realized that I would definitely have to slide. This is where my brain betrayed me by trying to think on the base paths. See, every time I had ever slid up to this point (and I had been playing baseball for almost ten years), I had gone in feet first. Every single time, in my entire life. There was no reason to think that this situation should be handled any differently. But as I approached third with my blazing speed, the junior senator from my cerebral cortex asked to be recognized, and was granted the floor.

“Hey, remember that old picture of Pete Rose diving headfirst into the base?” he said. “He was like three feet off the ground, hair flowing behind him, totally stretched out. That was fucking badass. We should try that.”

Various other sections of my brain began throwing stuff at the idiot who put this idea up for discussion. Precious seconds were lost as I leaned forward slightly, almost giving in to the idea before thinking better of it. It took just a split second to remember that I am not graceful and going headfirst would probably result in one of the ugliest plays in the history of the sport.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really have a split second to spare. That small consideration, to dive or not to dive, had already delayed me far too long, so that by the time I decided on the good old-fashioned feet-first maneuver, I was practically on top of the base.

The third baseman was just hangin’ around, chillaxin’, waiting there with the ball (which had arrived some time earlier; Coach was right, I should’ve held at second), when I came rolling in. Because I was so close to the bag when I started my slide, I was still sort of half-standing when I got there. And because he was standing pretty much on top of the bag when I arrived, just waiting to tag me and send us both on our way, my knee kinda-sorta scored a direct hit on his junk.

His reaction was about what you’d expect: he immediately dropped to the ground and writhed around in pain (he also dropped the ball, so I was safe) before reaching into his pants, pulling out his cup, and dropping it on the ground (okay, so I’m not sure I was fully expecting that last part). My coach came over to see if he was okay and told him to breathe – good advice in theory – while his coach ran onto the field, tracked down the umpire, and started complaining that my failure to slide constituted interference and I should be called out. So everyone clearly had his priorities in order.

Our trainer came down and checked the kid out, then parked him on the ground next to his bench with an ice pack. As luck would have it, I was playing first base and the visiting bench was along the first base line, so on my way onto the field at the start of the next inning, I stopped off to apologize and make sure he was okay. After the game, my brother and I caught the team bus before it left, with the intention of once again saying sorry – the way I look at it, you can never apologize too much for a nut-shot. The coach met us outside the door. I told him why I was there, and he started telling me again why I should’ve been called out. He might have been having trouble grasping what was really important in this situation.

In the end, I’m not sure what happened to that kid, though it’s probably worth noting that in the last game of my senior year, we played Pinkerton, and I hit a homerun that just barely cleared the fence on the varsity field. It was so close, in fact, that the rightfielder actually ran into the fence because he thought he had a play on the ball. I can’t decide which idea tickles me more: that it could’ve been the same guy or that in the span of a year I was harder on the Pinkertons than Ben Wade.