Tag: One Last Shot

One Last Shot – Season 3, Post 2: My Spring Training

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(Note: This article can also be found on Start Spreading The News.)

***

Opening Day is a month, a week, and a day away. That’s my Opening Day. The day my baseball season begins.

In 2019, after not pitching in any competitive baseball game for over 34 years, I made a comeback as the old guy, a 50+-year-old pitcher, in a highly competitive wood bat 35-year-old + baseball league. I pitched again last year.

The upcoming 2021 season will be my third.

After proving to myself that I can hold my own on the mound, and even pitch complete nine inning games, I am no longer content with just being able to do that.

Now I want to win.

Continue reading “One Last Shot – Season 3, Post 2: My Spring Training” →
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One Last Shot – Season 3, Post 1: This Time It’s For Real

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(This post can also be found on my Yankees blog Start Spreading the News.)

January 2021

***

This time it’s for real!

…or so I tell myself.

Yes. For goodness sake, this time it is for real.

This coming season, the 2021 season, will be mine. This will be my chance to shine. To pitch well. To win. Often.

And I have a plan to make sure it happens.

Continue reading “One Last Shot – Season 3, Post 1: This Time It’s For Real” →

One Last Shot… A Real Life Baseball Story (Part 12 – Game Four, The Story of a Catcher)

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Well, I am the happiest 0-4 pitcher on the planet.

***

I pitched well enough, I guess. I gave up more than a few hard hit balls for loud hits, some of them long drives for extra bases. I also gave up some weak ground balls for hits. And a few bloopers also fell in.

On the other hand, some popups were dropped or missed altogether by the fielders behind me, a few grounders went under the infielders’ gloves, and a few would-be ground outs resulted in poor throws that instead netted no outs.

(And, to be fair, a couple of the loudly hit balls were caught by the fielders behind me. If nothing else, my pitching kept the team on its feet.)

In short, for much of the game, there were a lot of runners on the bases as I pitched.

Continue reading “One Last Shot… A Real Life Baseball Story (Part 12 – Game Four, The Story of a Catcher)” →

One Last Shot… A Real Life Baseball Story Part 10 – RAIN!

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My third start of the season was scheduled for Sunday, May 5.  We were going to be back to Wright’s Field in Bloomfield to play a different team from the area. It seems that a few towns, Bloomfield being one of them, have more than one team in the league. I was looking forward to this opportunity to see if I could build off my modest success the week before.

This would also be my first chance to pitch in back-to-back weeks – a true test of whether or not my arm, and body was up to this challenge.

It wasn’t to be.

Rain, dreadful rain, washed away our chances to play.  

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One Last Shot… A Real Life Baseball Story (Part 8 – The Weeks Between)

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It was a great joy to get out on the mound and pitch again.  

Since my first outing on April 7, I have been reliving much of that game over and over in my mind.  I have also been surprised by the amount of people who have asked about the game.  It’s been fun to tell the story to so many others.  (To re-cap: It had been going surprisingly well through three innings before it all fell apart in the fourth.) 

I did show in that game that I could still throw strikes, that I could throw a lot of pitches, and that I could still get guys out.  

But now that it’s over, all of that isn’t enough.  

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One Last Shot… A Real Life Baseball Story (Part 3)

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The following is the tale of my attempt to play competitive baseball for the first time in over thirty years. Since there is no way that I can hit (I could never hit a fastball), I offered to try out for this team in a 35+ league as a pitcher.

This is the third installment of the series.

Continue reading “One Last Shot… A Real Life Baseball Story (Part 3)” →