Say it ain’t so, Joe
Gene Steinmeyer
I don’t know about you, but I’m shocked at how fast this school year has gone. In our house, the school year doesn’t go by the quarter or the semester. It goes by the fall sports season, the winter sports season and the spring sports season. The school year might be coming to a close, but former New York Yankees catching great Yogi Berra said it best. “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”
The spring sports season might even run past the school days with the Missouri state track, soccer, tennis and boys’ golf tournaments. The one spring sport I left off is baseball. Baseball is unlike any other sport. It’s the only outdoor sport, except for golf and softball, that you can’t play at our home field after dark. There are no lights to illuminate our baseball diamond.
It can be a beautiful day and games have to be postponed because of muddy fields. You can’t fool Mother Nature. It’s the only high school sport I know that plays its junior varsity game after the varsity contest. Since games never begin before 4:30 pm, the junior varsity game is the one that will get cut short by lack of daylight.
“Say it ain’t so,” is appropriate to some of the handicaps of my favorite sport. There are so many baseball phrases that someone uses almost every day, we forget where it actually came from.
“Say it ain’t so,” supposedly was said to Shoeless Joe Jackson by a youngster as Joe emerged from a Chicago courtroom after being indicted for cheating during the 1919 World Series.
I hear so many times, “Hope springs eternal.” That came from the most famous baseball poem, Casey at the Bat.
“Hope springs eternal from within the human breast. We’d put even money with Casey at the bat…”
What’s not to love about baseball? I was able to feed my family for almost four decades coaching basketball. Amazingly, I was paid to coach basketball. Thank goodness the basketball season would always end just about the time the major league pitchers and catchers would gather in Florida and Arizona to begin spring training.
Don’t get me wrong, I do like football, especially when your favorite teams win as often as the Spoofhounds and Bearcats. However, I have to point out what Jim Bouton, the former pitcher who wrote the first baseball tell-all book, Ball Four, said.
“Baseball players are smarter than football players,” Bouton once said. “How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many players on the field?”
Even the former University of Oklahoma and Dallas Cowboy football coach, Barry Switzer, used baseball to describe arrogant people.
“Some people are born on third base and think they hit a triple,” the son of a bootlegger said.
Football and basketball may be really popular with the public, but the late owner of the Chicago White Sox had many analogies why baseball is the best sport.
“Baseball is the most orderly thing in our world,” Bill Veeck said. “If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer can’t get you off.”
Baseball may seem slow to some, but to the true fan, it is as important as your first kiss.
“Love is the most important thing in the world,” an unnamed 8-year-old exclaimed, “but baseball is pretty good, too.”
Bryant Gumbel, the former host of the Today Show and present host of HBO’s Real Sports, agreed with the eight-year old.
“The other sports are just sports,” Gumbel once said. “Baseball is love.”
The great baseball movie, Bull Durham, claimed baseball to be a religious experience as Annie explained at the start of the movie.
“There are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and 108 stitches in a baseball,” she said. “When I learned that, I gave God a chance.”
One of the great baseball books I read, Men at Work, was written by political columnist, George Will. He had a strong feeling about America’s pastime.
“Baseball, it’s said, is only a game,” Will wrote in his book. “True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona.”
Not everyone is as serious about baseball. Former major league pitcher, Larry Anderson, asked a reasonable question.
“Why does everyone stand up and sing Take Me Out to the Ball Game? They’re already here.”
The late, great voice of the Chicago Cubs, Harry Caray found humor in his favorite team’s failings.
“What does a mamma bear on the pill have in common with the World Series,” Harry asked, tongue-in-cheek. “No cubs.”
Sometimes, I really get carried away. I just hope Maryville head baseball coach, Matt Houchin, and his varsity team can keep winning all the way to baseball’s Final Four. It won’t be easy with his two senior pitchers injured, but hope springs eternal, right?
It’s my wish for people to come to watch the Spoofhound baseball team in postseason play. It’s not a real popular high school spectator sport, but James Earl Jones gave me hope when he gave his famous speech in the movie Field of Dreams.
“They will come, Ray. People most definitely will come.”
