I was a teenager watching a baseball game when I first heard the term ‘in-between hop’. Having never heard it before, I did a double-take. A what?!?!? So with high volume and great fervor, I asked Tim McCarver – who was in my television at the time – “I don’t care if you played in four decades, but how can you make stuff up?”
He had the benefit of replay though and as the bounding ball approached the diminutive infielder (likely shortstop Rafael Santana) Timmy exclaimed in his Memphis drawl, “you see there, he was unable to get it on the short hop, or the high hop; he got caught and had to charge and take it on the in-beTWAIN [sic] hop.”
There I was thinking hey, I play baseball at a suburban-New York City private school. You can’t pull a fast one on me like that. Before I knew it however the heavens opened and the sea parted. As clear as the cathode ray tube allowed – the in-between hop was born to me.
With that in mind I am not going to try to field room-service, chest-high hops on this site that so many other people are doing… and doing well. I am not going to try to pick clean short hops with technical precision and quick reflexes. There will also be no Baltimore chops, butcherboys, squibbers, knubbers, cueshots, jam-jobs, wormburners, rollers up along first (Thanks, Vin!), or at ‘em balls.
This will be a baseball-inspired blog that will not be about baseball.
In general, you won’t find here real statistical analysis, or fantasy League statistical analysis for that matter. I won’t take on Hall of Fame debates, trade possibilities, or second-guessing the manager’s moves. You won’t see me vent about my favorite team and you won’t find me bashing the teams I don’t like. You can also bet, there will be no pepper games here.
What I intend to do is to find reminders of how this game, which was once the National Pastime, still permeates our consciousness. In another forum, I recently wrote that so many things are under attack lately in the country. One is the economy. Another is baseball. We talk so often about the state of union, so can we figure out the union’s state in the context of baseball in-between all the hops, the lines, and the rocks and the hard places that make up life in our 21st century? In this forum, I’ll try to delve into those issues in ways that are fun, interactive, and thoughtful.
Do I think it’s going to be as easy as one, two, three; or a can of corn (see where I’m going)? No. But I was connected once and if I can connect you then I will feel like I have done some good.
That’s why they play the games, right?
Photo Credits: Luke Andrew Pilon (click his link on the blogroll)
