My home run

The secondary school I went to in Toronto was big on sports. None of my friends were and I most certainly was not. We were much more interested in smoking dope and writing poetry. So, it’s a bit odd that we ended up playing baseball.

Here’s what happened (as best I can remember). Four of us (Krys, Doug, Rob and I) were walking in a local park after school one afternoon. Said park had a baseball diamond. There were a couple of kids hanging around with a baseball bat, but no balls. Somehow or other we ended up playing with them, hitting rocks instead of a ball. Happily no one got hurt.

I have no idea now how this led to what happened next. By the following Sunday afternoon (or perhaps the Sunday after that), the four of us, along with various friends and older siblings (many of whom actually had gloves and bats) were gathered on the grass outside the local waterworks playing baseball. The bases were shirts and jackets, distances weren’t measured.

Some of the older siblings had been quite sporty in their day and had a tendency to take it all rather more seriously than others. Invariably two of them would be the team captains. Invariably Krys and I would be the last two picked for teams. As there weren’t enough gloves to go around, Krys and I were generally put in right field, where, the hope was, the ball would seldom go. I can’t speak for Krys, but I can say that, if the ball actually did make it to right field, it was pretty embarrassing. There was no way I was going to attempt to catch it without a glove, so there were no fly balls. And I couldn’t throw worth a damn, so the best I could do was get the ball closer to the first baseman. (Years and years later I ran into one of those team captains who surprised me by saying he’d always admired Krys and me in those baseball days. Why? Because we were so plucky, turning up week after week. Plucky? Hardly. I think we were suckers for punishment. Or we just viewed it as an afternoon in the sun, smoking dope and hanging out with mates.)

I was a crap batter as well. I’m not saying I never got on base. Occasionally I would hit the ball and the throw would be to another base, so I’d make it to first. More often than that the pitching was bad enough that, if I just stood at the plate without swinging, I’d get a walk.

And then there was my home run.

As usual when I got up to bat, the outfielders all moved in practically to the baseline. (Oh, ha, ha.) Except this time I somehow managed to hit the ball over the left fielder’s head, so he had to go running for it. Decided what the hell, this might never happen again, so I rounded first and started running for second. The throw to second was also high, but not as high as the throw to third, which went way over the guy’s head and rolled down the hill at the side of our makeshift ballpark. So, much to the astonishment of all – most of all myself – I scored a run.

Now, if you know your baseball, you will know, as my then partner Mike pointed out to me years later when I told him about my home run, what actually happened that day was I got a base hit and managed to get home on two errors.

Fuck that – even if it is true. As far as I was concerned, I got a home run that day. And I still like to think about it that way.

Why am I thinking about this at all today? Take a wild guess.

Yes, it is very possible that the Blue Jays could win the 2025 World Series this weekend. And, as I’ve been saying for a while now, there is something quite delicious about the prospect of the only Canadian team in the Major Leagues winning this year. The perfect middle finger to the Wankmaggot and his “51st state” crap.

Did you see his post that was doing the rounds last weekend on social media about him refusing to contemplate inviting whichever team won to the White House. Turns out the post wasn’t real.

It fooled a lot of people, including, apparently, Stephen King. It’s hardly surprising. When I saw it posted on Facebook I thought, ‘Can this possibly be real?’ And the answer was yes, because he’s a petty little prick who spews the most appalling bullshit all the time.

GO, JAYS!