Member-only story
the infinite vs. the unknowable
The Reveries of a Retired Shortstop
The rain wasn’t helping things. The dugout steps were slippery enough where you could’ve slid on your spikes and blew out an ankle, or gone stitches-over-seams splatting onto the concrete. Maybe your glove gets so it’s a bit waterlogged too, and so that could’ve been what the catcher’s saying out there, you know, when the ball maybe slips through and skitters away to Wrigley’s off-center, brick-wall backstop. Not that us ballplayers are ones to line up excuses for bad plays, but leather doesn’t take to wet well. Everyone knows that. But me, my cleats were high and dry in the dugout after I’d scoured the mud out of ’em between innings there, and I was in quite the mood for pondering, I guess. Might’ve been the lull of the game’s pace or something, but my mind it got to roaming.
There’s, too, a record that not everybody’s going to know about, being that it don’t happen much, and that’s where the pitcher gets four k’s in one inning. Think old Cannonball Crane was the first, a way back in 1880 or something. It’s a strange rule that allows it. The catcher’s got to actually catch the ball after a strikeout for it to be official. If he drops it or let’s the thing squib away behind him, well, then the batter can run on down to first and try to get there before the catcher finds that ball and fires it over to first before the batter…
