Hitting Grapefruits

I know that I should be focusing on matters of greater import. In Haiti, some 150,000 people have been confirmed dead in the Port-au-Prince area alone. Celebrities are throwing grand benefit concerts, survivors are miraculously being dragged from the rubble ten days later, and the world is getting ready to meet in Montreal to discuss reconstruction efforts (a return to the 2003 scene of the crime, as it were). Beyond that there’s goings on in Afghanistan, the new ‘Bin Laden’ tape, the upcoming Iraqi elections, and on and on.

I’ve been going through phases lately. Some days I find it almost beyond important to sit down and write. Others, I just do my usual reading and leave it at that.

Last night I spent some time hitting some balls in a batting cage. Well, they weren’t really baseballs, they were large, grapefruit sized, green things that were travelling no more than maybe 20 miles an hour, if that. It was entirely underwhelming.

I can understand why they don’t use real baseballs – liability. Having been hit in my youth by pitching machines hurling balls up to 90 mph, I can attest to what it feels like to lean into one and get nailed in the ribs. It’s not pleasant. Nor is fouling a ball off your foot at that speed. But as an adult, I must admit that prior to entering that cage last night I hoped I would be facing real baseballs coming at me with a little heat on them to see if I could still spot the shape of the laces in that briefest of moments, to have the bat bite and then shock my arms when I connected. Alas, when I got in there and stood at the plate, I was totally devastated as the machine issued the first lobbing grapefruit and I watched as it arched towards me.

The balls were so slow that I could have done my taxes in the time it took one of them to reach me. On top of that, when you connect with them there’s no force behind the return, a muffled thud producing lazy line drives. It was so ridiculous, in fact, that I successfully switch hit, something that I actually can’t do.

Adding insult to injury, all of the bats were metal – which I despise. Baseball bats are made of wood – end of story. Then again, if you’re hitting grapefruits, I guess it doesn’t really matter.

It made me curious though. Surely, somewhere in the Lower Mainland there must be cages that use real balls and have machines that can be adjusted for speed. Maybe later I’ll hit up the Google and see what I can find.

In a grave in the Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburg that was unmarked until 1975, three years after his legacy was finally allowed through the hallowed doors in Cooperstown, the venerable Josh Gibson is surely spinning. Using a wooden bat, he is the only man to ever hit a fair ball entirely out of Yankee Stadium – in 1934. Unfortunately, given that he was African American, the fact that he was perhaps the greatest power hitter of all time is little known.