Wednesday, April 22, 2009
NO, HAVEN'T FALLEN OFF THE PLANET.
I just figured I better get on here before they pull my blog card or something.
How ya been?
------
THIS SATURDAY, AT CLUB RED:
(Click this to make it big. Trust me, you wanna make it big.)
I have a LOT to do in this show. It's not exactly going to be the Tom Tuerff show, but I SHOW up a lot. Sometimes with ladies who SHOW a lot.
------
That reminds me, I gotta get a guitar case.
------
It is BASEBALL SEASON and I am happy. I love baseball. The older I get the more I find I love it for different reasons. Mostly, I like it now because it's very philosophical. I like to sit and watch a game and try to guess what the pitcher is going to throw, and whether the batter will even bother to swing at it. Often I'm right.
I was a terrible baseball player but it didn't matter. I was in Little League from the 4th through the 7th grade (except for the 5th grade when some kid threatened to beat me up if I joined his team). In the fourth grade I was living near Chicago, it was 1968, the entire city was reeling from the King/Kennedy assassinations, and by the end of the summer the hippies would be getting their heads pounded in at the Democratic convention.
But I didn't care. I was on a baseball team. A sponsored baseball team. ALL the teams had sponsors. Our team was (don't laugh -- okay, laugh your ass off; my mother still does) sponsored by "Tiffany Coiffures." Apparently Tiffany Coiffures, which I remember seeing once, was a hole in the wall that made a lot of money, because it was sponsoring our baseball team.
We weren't great. But we weren't awful. We ended up with a losing record but I remember it because it was the only year that lousy, baseball-playing me actually did anything on the field worth remembering.
I didn't play much. I was one of those guys who had to wait until it was obvious that the game was a blow-out.
So there we were, one summer night, getting totally waxed by Simoniz Car Wash, 12 -0 (yes, that was intentional) .
Last inning.
"Tuerff! Go play left field!"
So I'm standing out in left field, watching this happen: first kid strikes out. Second kid walks. Third kid walks (nobody pitches very well in the fourth grade.) Foruth kid gets a single (but nobody runs very well at this age either, so nobody scores), bases are loaded. Fifth kid (we pretty much knew the other team by name at this point, we'd seen them all so often in this game) strikes out.
So it's two out, bases loaded, and the proverbial "BEST HITTER ON THE TEAM," a guy who I remember to this day was named Jim Giblin, steps to the plate. Giblin simply didn't make outs. When he got wood on the ball, he put in Montana. He'd already done this twice already this evening.
One pitch.
SMACK
Okay, now here's what I remember. Giblin hits a solid line drive RIGHT AT ME (keep in mind, I'm playing deep. The park was in Mount Prospect and I was standing somewhere in Arlington Heights). I took two steps forward, extended my glove and the ball
sailed into my glove.
That's what I remember. Apparently, this moderate fly out did not make much of an impression on me. The audience however, went completely batshit. TOTALLY BATSHIT. Standing ovation for catching a baseball. Even Jim Giblin came over to me as I was running in to the dugout and said, "Hey, man, NIIIICE catch!" Like he was dumbfounded or something.
My best friend Eddie Herndon, who was on my team, said "Nice Catch!" My coach said, "Nice Catch!"
A week later, when the little league sent out its newsletter with the box scores and capsule descriptions of all the games, our game's wrap-up included this sentence: "Outfielder TOM TUERFF made a fantastic catch to rob JIM GIBLIN of a home run."
Did I mention my dad was there? Watching?
As the years went by, every time my father told this story, my catch reached Olympic proportions. I ran three miles to catch this ball. I jumped in the sky. I swatted a bird out of the way, landed on a horse and rode the horse back into town, waving the baseball triumphantly in my mitt.
Look: I got to play that night. The object of Left Field is: if they hit it your way, catch the ball. He did. I took two steps (okay, maybe three) and caught the ball waist high in front of me. I preserved our 12-0 loss by being one of the three guys who struck out in the bottom of the inning.
I still have my uniform somewhere. My mother kept it all these years because a baseball jersey that says "Tiffany Coiffures" IS really funny.
TT
I just figured I better get on here before they pull my blog card or something.
How ya been?
------
THIS SATURDAY, AT CLUB RED:
(Click this to make it big. Trust me, you wanna make it big.)
I have a LOT to do in this show. It's not exactly going to be the Tom Tuerff show, but I SHOW up a lot. Sometimes with ladies who SHOW a lot.
------
That reminds me, I gotta get a guitar case.
------
It is BASEBALL SEASON and I am happy. I love baseball. The older I get the more I find I love it for different reasons. Mostly, I like it now because it's very philosophical. I like to sit and watch a game and try to guess what the pitcher is going to throw, and whether the batter will even bother to swing at it. Often I'm right.
I was a terrible baseball player but it didn't matter. I was in Little League from the 4th through the 7th grade (except for the 5th grade when some kid threatened to beat me up if I joined his team). In the fourth grade I was living near Chicago, it was 1968, the entire city was reeling from the King/Kennedy assassinations, and by the end of the summer the hippies would be getting their heads pounded in at the Democratic convention.
But I didn't care. I was on a baseball team. A sponsored baseball team. ALL the teams had sponsors. Our team was (don't laugh -- okay, laugh your ass off; my mother still does) sponsored by "Tiffany Coiffures." Apparently Tiffany Coiffures, which I remember seeing once, was a hole in the wall that made a lot of money, because it was sponsoring our baseball team.
We weren't great. But we weren't awful. We ended up with a losing record but I remember it because it was the only year that lousy, baseball-playing me actually did anything on the field worth remembering.
I didn't play much. I was one of those guys who had to wait until it was obvious that the game was a blow-out.
So there we were, one summer night, getting totally waxed by Simoniz Car Wash, 12 -0 (yes, that was intentional) .
Last inning.
"Tuerff! Go play left field!"
So I'm standing out in left field, watching this happen: first kid strikes out. Second kid walks. Third kid walks (nobody pitches very well in the fourth grade.) Foruth kid gets a single (but nobody runs very well at this age either, so nobody scores), bases are loaded. Fifth kid (we pretty much knew the other team by name at this point, we'd seen them all so often in this game) strikes out.
So it's two out, bases loaded, and the proverbial "BEST HITTER ON THE TEAM," a guy who I remember to this day was named Jim Giblin, steps to the plate. Giblin simply didn't make outs. When he got wood on the ball, he put in Montana. He'd already done this twice already this evening.
One pitch.
SMACK
Okay, now here's what I remember. Giblin hits a solid line drive RIGHT AT ME (keep in mind, I'm playing deep. The park was in Mount Prospect and I was standing somewhere in Arlington Heights). I took two steps forward, extended my glove and the ball
sailed into my glove.
That's what I remember. Apparently, this moderate fly out did not make much of an impression on me. The audience however, went completely batshit. TOTALLY BATSHIT. Standing ovation for catching a baseball. Even Jim Giblin came over to me as I was running in to the dugout and said, "Hey, man, NIIIICE catch!" Like he was dumbfounded or something.
My best friend Eddie Herndon, who was on my team, said "Nice Catch!" My coach said, "Nice Catch!"
A week later, when the little league sent out its newsletter with the box scores and capsule descriptions of all the games, our game's wrap-up included this sentence: "Outfielder TOM TUERFF made a fantastic catch to rob JIM GIBLIN of a home run."
Did I mention my dad was there? Watching?
As the years went by, every time my father told this story, my catch reached Olympic proportions. I ran three miles to catch this ball. I jumped in the sky. I swatted a bird out of the way, landed on a horse and rode the horse back into town, waving the baseball triumphantly in my mitt.
Look: I got to play that night. The object of Left Field is: if they hit it your way, catch the ball. He did. I took two steps (okay, maybe three) and caught the ball waist high in front of me. I preserved our 12-0 loss by being one of the three guys who struck out in the bottom of the inning.
I still have my uniform somewhere. My mother kept it all these years because a baseball jersey that says "Tiffany Coiffures" IS really funny.
TT
Comments:
Post a Comment
