My funny post is not that funny---but it will suffice (oh, and it is long---Not Herman Mellville but quasi epic)

This is my attempt at levity and humor to beat out the June 30th deadline for this competition.

I will call it, "The Catch and the Drop and the No-catch and the No-drop,", mostly related to baseball and life. Although football and basketball may be evoked as well, and perhaps the discus, the javelin and the hammer may come into play... 

Who can really know what will be shared in a blog?

The Catch and the Drop and the No-catch and the No-drop

by yours  truly

Perhaps I have been thinking about dramatic plays near the fences due to this hoax of a ball girl making the fabulous catch in foul territory right off the fair mark in a Fresno Triple AAA baseball game.

It was faked. She was a stunt woman, they had cables lifting her, and it was made for a commercial campaign. I found out this truth this morning, the day after viewing it on my wife's e-mail. And buying it for a short while. I was duped! Did you believe this?

But the fact that it was staged didn't stop my mother-in-law from sending it to my wife and later her encouraging me, nay insisting, that I check it out last night. These are people who would normally have as much interest in seeing a baseball highlight as me watching the "best" of a dog show. Not much zeal there. Or, perhaps a novelty and a smile at best.

I was duly impressed by the catch. But I did seriously doubt her position that close to the foul line and home run fences in a game like that. Triple A is not bush league. And Triple A should not be written Triple AAA. I just noticed that. Did you "catch" it?

Anyway, we have all seen great catches in the outfield. Tori Hunter, Jim Edmonds, Ken Griffey Jr, etc. My favorite player of all time, Tim Raines Sr had a few. We all now about Robby Thompson back in 1954 or so. At the Polo Grounds? And I hear that an outfielder named Willie Mays was not bad at making plays, many catches included. Some of those include making throws and reciprocal catches and tags at home.

And then there is Jose Canseco or Dave Parker.

Mr Cuban-Puerto Rican-American bash brother let a ball bounce off his head for a home run. While running to the fence.

If a part of you does not chuckle at this, you need to re-evaluate your standards of hilarity and hijinx.

A home run! Now there are errors, and gloves cause funny catches and drops, over the fence, in the ivy (Wrigley Field), and all the endless possibilities of fan interference, but Jose takes the cake. That is usin' yer noggin.

Dave Parker, famed power hitter in the Cinncinnati right field, at least once, let a routine drive drop while blowing a large bubble of gum while chewing and hence inflating said bubble gum from his lips and gums. Gum . Gum rhymes with dumb.

I consider that an excellent lesson in English.

Dave Parker, a man whose size could rival Canseco, pre -steroids era (well then again, maybe not), had this lackadaisical way of flipping his glove at catches anyway, kind of like a guy snatching his car keys when tossed over his head to him from five feet away.

Whoops. It slipped, boss! Bazooka madness.

And speaking of right field and greatness and Wrigley Field, I will never forget when I saw "the Hawk " Andre Dawson throw a guy out at first when he scooped up his line drive to right field and Andre gunned it to the first baseman, perhaps Leon "the Bull" Durham.

The play was amazing, and just thinking about the hitter trying to make it to first base and seeing this unfold on a normal solid base hit? Of course it would not have been complete without the teammate being ready in kind.

To make "the catch".

Good on ya, mate. They call him The Bull. Right next to Rhino, across the diamond from the Penguin.

Infielders are always playing catch.

A good skill to cultivate.

How fantastic would it be to hit a smasher to the "the Penguin" Ron Cey at third, he tosses it to Ryne Sanberg "the Rhino" at second who then finishes the double play to "the Bull" at first?

Sometimes The Hawk would back up a run down.

What a zoo.

But these were the Cubs of my youth. Small fuzzy bears.

Bears are great catchers. Especially at pickinet baskets. Although there are plenty of boo boos. Just ask the baseball sage catcher Yogi Berra.

Do I need to quote him? What does he have to say about catching?

"We made too many wrong mistakes." (Yogi doesn't deny he said this. He said that he won't deny that he said it because it gave him such a thrill when former president George Bush quoted Yogi as having said it.)

But you could counter this quote with:

"I didn't really say everything I said."

Well then, no need trying to correctly quote him, then.

But the Cubs in the 1980s were THAT cool. Worth a Yogi Berra quote.

What a zoo. Catching my drift?

Catching the spirit?

I remember two rather funny things about my freshman year of high school somewhat related to what I have gotten "caught up" into already.

One was my Cuban-Puerto Rican-American Spanish teacher, Pedro Sainz. He was a first year teacher coming from the great island Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Like Canseco, he was a Cuban transplant via PR. From his plane flight to Chicago to my hometown five driving hours to the south, he accidentally took the bus to Bloomington, Illinois, instead of his real destination, Bloomington, Indiana.

An easy enough mistake to make.

Too bad it cost him 4 days to correct. Yes, the return visit to Chicago rather than the 4-5 hour correction across state lines, etc.

"Lost in translation" and stuck at the "terminal".

Bill Murray knows about baseball catches. So does Tom Hanks.

It just doesn't matter and no crying in baseball.

Pedro, as a new swimming coach at our public high school in 1986, Bloomington South, somehow ended up with many recruiting "catches" at our pool. There was a Puerto Rican back stroke Olympian named Manuel Guzman, a Brazilian wiz kid named Eduardo Silva, a Spanish swimmer whose name eludes me (Ed Sanchez, I believe), an outstanding breast stroke transfer from California, Steve Weir, plus a really good free style swimmer from Bedford, Indiana, a half an hour down south.

My locally born and bred friends all competed, but our teams were dominated by "foreign" talent.

Pedro retired from his postion before the rest of the state caught on and caught fire about the IHSAA (Indiana High School Athletic Association) rules on not recruting athletes to your school while in secondary education.

Good catch, Senor Sainz. You have to know when to drop a hot potato, after winning the state championships and breaking many state records with an international cast of competitors, many of whom were attracted to IU's swimming coach legend Doc Councilman and the Division I swimming program a mile or so from our school campus.

That same year as a 15 year old finding my own en media pubescence form as an "athlete", our physical education class had our spring unit playing baseball. I had normally been adept at playing the game that I inwardly feared failing and embarrassing myself in. I was an awkward teenager close to six footer and trying to get my body right, but I had naturally ability to catch and field. And hit. Always had been decently coordinated.

Evan Thomas was a different matter. Evan never had good coordination on the fields of play, and he would be the first to admit this.

His throwing form was herky jerky and ugly to witness. Sort of what a 1970s robot would do with a pitch. C*ck back, release...And the accuracy was not a constant. And the trajectory was never pretty or smooth.

We had observed it from 4th grade in the early eighties, and his catching and other motor skills were not much better. Most of our mutual experiences were on the football field, recess games of nerf football pick up games.

We liked to put him on the line.

So we played these PE games 9th grade year divided amongst other freshman, but then culminating our unit with an All Star game against some upperclassmen.

I don't know how Evan was allowed onto the outfield, but somehow it happened.Our high school coach and gym instructor, Jim Werner, somehow made the call.

Bazooka madness.

Evan, by then, may have been taller than me, at 6'1" or 6'2" and gawky. Not skinny, and not fat, but clumsy. He probably weighed 200 pounds. Non-athletic weight, to be sure, but to his credit, he could ride a bike well . He had some strength.

But sports with balls? And motor skills? He kind of ran like a duck. Or a guy with bad shin splints. Or nerve damage. But a really nice guy and a friend all the same, don't get me wrong.

By the end of the game against the big boys, we needed one out and they had guys on base to win the game at the last at bat. One more out and we would win.

It was a smash. High and rather shallow. I was playing deeper center right, and Evan was ahead of me maybe 20-30  yards. We put him there to be out of the way.

Had he not been there, I could have jumped up and made the play with a lot of effort and some luck.

But he was fixed there with his sights on the ball in the early morning spring skies, clear and greyish. The sun was up and menacing, if I recollect well.

The ball sored, and our hopes were diminishing as we saw who was there for the grab, or the imminent drop.

The catch to seal the game. Or dropped ball for shame and humiliation.

Our freshman pride. All or nothing. In the shadows of the mitt of Evan Thomas.

I ran up close, thinking I could maybe snag a deflected drop or a complete miss...But it took me a while to get there. I had to decide quickly if I would try to jump and make the catch above or around him. Catch or no, this would look c*cky and as poor sportsmanship on my part.

And Evan stood his ground, raising one single glove high above his head with a stiff arm instead of cradling it in two hands in front of his face as most coaches would prefer for a pop up.

And then the catch happened.

It stuck. Straight into the glove and it stuck.

Jubilation.

Few times in my life have I wanted to hug a guy so much, dance and sing and shout for joy. And frolic.

The catch!

Freshman year. 1986. Puberty is overcomeable.

And then there was the no-catch.

Fast forward to 1997.

My girl friend at the time, Jenni Davis, convinced me to play on the intramural softball team at Brigham Young University.

As a post grad, I got special waivers and paid a fee to participate. I was 26 and not in the best shape of my life. They put me at catcher a lot, and I would often platoon with another guy. I probably weighed in at 215 rather than a better shapely 195.

To put it into perspective, last year at 36 years of age I got down to  a svelt 178 and muscly (ahh, I suppose that should be muscular. But I was skinny). I am now at 205 but I will get down to 190 by the end of the summer.

Anyway, a big brawly guy on the opposing team smashed the ball over our outfielders heads and kept rounding the bases. This was the first of two championship games. His confidence or arrogance rubbed me wrong. I had a plan.

We had really good female talent, the least of which was my girlfriend. And some decent guys, too. I was among the least of them. But I thought I had savvy and pluck.

So my plan was to pretend to catch a toss in from the outfield to his dismay, all the while assuming he had a clear path to home on a inside the park home run.

I wanted to fool him by chasing him back to third.

But he was so dead set in lumbering into home plate, by the time he got there he really didn't think I could have possibly gotten a ball there that fast from our outfield, which was chasing his smash a mile away in a ditch.

I faked the catch and applied the tag on his leg as he passed me to the plate. Empty glove. Whoops.

Bazooka madness.

What the flip?

He looked back at me, and within an instant went ballistic upon realizing my trick.

He almost struck me. He was up in my grill, ranting and raving while multiple people from both teams, including some umpires, were separating us from sure physical brutality.

He was mad.Frothing at the mouth, I would say.

I was apologetic.

Sorry, I said, that is how we play basketball sometimes! I am from Indiana, that is what we do!

He went off on a tirade how his knee had been messed up because of sliding on a fake play like that a few years back, and that was cheating, and it took him a long time to recover from that terrible incident.

I stood corrected. I said I was sorry and wrong.

And evicted.

I felt contrite. But no blows were landed.

We won the game after our mutual eviction. He was more valuable to his team than I was to ours. The wind was sucked out of their sales, it seemed.

And we won the subsequent and following match, which I was allowed to play in.

We won the championship shirt, which I wore proudly thereafter for years.

The "no-catch".

A few weeks earlier than that championship series, I had an ignomious drop, but only warming up.

I was throwing and catching with a fellow teammate on the sidelines waiting for our game upcoming. He was a nice enough guy, who could not not throw the ball respectably slow, but he would zip the thing really fast. Despite my warnings.

I told him more than once to slow it down; to no avail.

He would pepper his practice throws at me. I couldn't catch all of them. Only make sure they didn't plunk me.Finally, one went sliding away to my upper right, my mitt deflected it by a bit and it promptly struck a female co-ed in the head, sitting on the sidelines watching the current game on the third base side.

She was a bit upset and hurt and teary eyed and glowering, not necessarily in that order.

I apologized to the best of my ability, but at that point it didn't matter much. The blow was dealt, the damage was done.

I dropped the catch. I was both mad at my own teammate and myself.

What a dumb thing to do to an innocent bystander!

I was 26 years old. My teammate was maybe 22 or 23.

What is seniority for, but to protect the weak and the innocent?

I dropped the errant pitch.

I "dropped the ball"on  reigning in this kid's over-enthusiasm.

Someone got hurt. That is not cool.

No bazooka madness.

Last part. Catch or drop?

Later that year, I was back in the great Midwest and my dad and I drove the seven hours to Detroit to see my favorite player of 16 major league years play at Tiger Stadium. Tim Purple Raines.

My dad and I sat behind first base.

Sometime in the middle of that Friday night game against the Yankees, third baseman Charlie Hayes popped up a towering high foul into the crisp autumn air. It was dark already. The white lights were glaring.

It was a moon shot, and was coming our way.

Many people gathered around to get the ball, but I was the tallest and had the best position.

I stuck my left arm straight up, much like Evan Thomas did of so many years prior.

Perhaps because of the smaller people around me, I did not use proper form on my catch.

No cradling, no "can of corn" technique. Just like Evan Thomas! Only he had a glove.

Maybe I felt like by pulling in the catch properly I would end up hurting someone below me or they would simply jostle my catch and I would lose it in a jarring mess.

I tried the Evan Thomas straight arm squeeze, only this time bare handed.

I tried to the best of my ability to clamp on to the ball while straining with my outstretched arm.

Nope.

It popped out and some kid got the ball off the subsequent caroms under the seats.

Just as well. He would get a bigger thrill out of that ball than me.

My dad and a guy next to us that we had befriended chided me for the drop. It seemed other fans behind us did, too.

So close to greatness!

I attempted to get my pride back, and I nursed my burning palm back to normal.

I dropped the ball.

But it didn't go to my head.

It's OK to sw@llow your pride in life and baseball.

Right, Mr. Canseco?

Can you get that embarrassing moment back?

No way, Jose!

Your brashness will accompany you with that play forever. No matter how many good things you did on and off the field. You needed to learn how to "drop" things like airing dirty laundry when it was yours that was the dirtiest.

Let it drop. Don't get caught up in finger pointing.

Don't blow it. Sorry. A game by Parker Brothers.

Bazooka madness.

Catch it!

And keep dropping by!

And don't drop out just because you catch a hint of sarcasm, sentimentalism and nostalgia.

These are things not to be dropped. Catch your breathe and the sense of yourself and life, and catch up with what you know is yours.

What is the catch?

The catch is probably your family.

Go play catch with them, and never drop the ball...with them.

And when you do drop it, pick it up, apologize and keep on keeping on. Don't dwell on it too much.

Catch my drift? Bazooka madness.

Clinch