My So-Called Baseball Career - Luis Gonzalez
I’ve never liked baseball. In fact, I find it completely boring. One of the greatest things about migrating to the U.S. was the expanded choice of sports to follow.
Well, that and the whole freedom thing.
I became a football fan from the very first quarter of the very first game I watched on TV. If I had to guess, I’d say 50% of my “first year in America” English vocabulary consisted of football terms. I remember sitting in an American History class, asked about the Civil War, and somehow using the word touchdown to describe what “Stonewall” Jackson did to the Union at Bull Run.
Oddly, I never played football in high school. I was a band guy—and I liked being a band guy. But when the last quarter ended and the cold winds of December blew in, things got boring. Sure, we had winter concerts and Christmas break parties ahead, but life lost a little of its excitement without football season.
Then, in my junior year, sometime during a late December conversation, the subject of baseball came up.
My best friend at the time was Paul, a trumpet player like me. Along with Marshall (the marching band’s bass drummer), Wayne (alto sax), and the Greenfield twins (trombone and trumpet), we formed the tight-knit group that makes high school bearable. Paul was a high school oddity—either a jock who played an instrument or a band geek who played ball. We never settled that argument.
Every year, just as the last strains of our school’s fight song drifted beyond the bleachers into the November night, Paul would put away his spats, grab his mitt, and head off to his own field of dreams. He had been a catcher for as long as I could remember, idolizing Johnny Bench like no one I’ve met since. His biggest thrill came in our junior year when the senior wearing #5 finally graduated. In Paul’s world, #5 belonged behind home plate with him.
Like Bench, Paul was a hustler—moving his 5’10”, husky-jeans-wearing body with reckless speed in pursuit of every foul ball ever hit. Husky isn’t a word I use lightly.
He was a solid hitter too. He never batted less than contact and was good enough to bat cleanup for weaker teams. He even managed to steal the occasional base—though, in reality, I think more than a few sophomore infielders saw 232 pounds of pure insanity barreling toward them and just got out of the way. I used to tease him, calling them “scared” bases instead of stolen ones.
It was winter break, 1973. The five of us were sitting around listening to Floyd or maybe Chicago—back then, it was always one or the other—when Paul suggested we all try out for the baseball team.
Wayne and the Greenfield twins shut that idea down immediately, and at first, so did I. I was far more interested in chasing flute players than fly balls, and baseball threatened to cramp those sacred Friday night, pizza-movie-whatever high school rituals.
But Paul kept at it for weeks. And when he casually mentioned that a certain flute player with long chestnut hair and diamond-like eyes came to all the home games, well… I suddenly found myself saying yes.
Which is how, a few weeks later, I ended up in a cramped, smelly dugout, gloved and spiked, waiting for my name to be called.
Look at me, I can be centerfield.
As it turned out, I was a decent hitter—but I sucked at everything else. And anyone watching could tell my heart wasn’t really in it. Our coach, whom we just called “Coach,” would scan his charts, making substitution after substitution, yet my name never came up. Which was fine—I was busy standing by the bullpen, discussing earned run averages with a certain flute player whose eyes sparkled when she laughed.
Meanwhile, we were having one hell of a season.
Finally, around our 15th or 16th game, my name was called.
The game was a throwaway—we were crushing our cross-county rivals. Coach saw an opportunity to abide by the School Board’s “every student must play at least three innings during regular season” rule, so he called up a few benchwarmers, including me, and placed us where we’d do the least amount of damage. I got left field.
I ended up playing six innings—more than required. Coach wanted to save his starters for a more important game, so he left us in. Turns out, the other team was so bad that even our “C” lineup kept scoring runs.
I got up to bat three times.
First at-bat: a slow-rolling infield hit that should have been an easy out, but their bespectacled first baseman was nowhere near the base—or the neighborhood—so I got a hit.
Second at-bat: popped out to right field.
Third at-bat: a legitimate double, bringing in two runners.
That was the entirety of my baseball career.
I never played another inning and confirmed what I already knew—baseball was as boring to play as it was to watch.
But I walked away with one thing: a career batting average of .667, on a team that went on to place second in the state finals.
Paul’s career batting average? Somewhere around .270. I have never let him live down the fact that mine beats his by a country mile. Never mind that his at-bats (sorry—plate appearances) outnumber mine by, oh, about three hundred to one.
Fast forward thirty-three years.
Last month, at a convention, a group of guys started talking about baseball—specifically, the company’s annual game against a competitor’s team. We’d taken a brutal beating last year and wanted redemption. Someone asked if I played.
I told them about my run at the state championship.
They were very impressed. Especially with my .667 batting average. So impressed that they immediately asked me to join the team.
Now I don’t know what to do.
They want an answer, and they’re convinced the guy with the .667 batting average is going to lead them to victory—just like he did 33 years ago.
But the reality? The moment I take a bat in my hands again, my career is about to enter a serious slump.
And quite possibly, my comeback will peak the moment I agree to play.
Somewhere, Paul is laughing.
