Thom Brennaman, welcome to the unemployment line

Got kind of tired packing and unpacking
Town to town and up and down the dial
Maybe you and me were never meant to be
But baby think of me once in awhile
I'm at WKRP in Cincinnati

 

I'm certain most of us (or all) played some form of backyard/sandlot stick and ball. From throwing the ball on the tile roof and trying to guess where it would come down to playing in the sand field between houses in Florida (before it was built on), we devised all sorts of rules and arguments. Plus, who didn't get a Pitch Back for at least one Christmas present?

During high school, my best friend Gary and I lived one block from the Evangelical Free church, which had a backstop and grass field. We'd play doubleheaders every day during the summer, one nine-inning game in the afternoon and one after dinner, with a bucket of tennis balls. He was the Dodgers and I was the Tigers, and we agreed that routine grounders were outs, as were fly balls that didn't reach the blacktop. Anything sharply hit was a single, any line drive that bounced onto the asphalt was a double and a fly ball to the blacktop (about 225 feet) was a homer.

Screw pitch counts, because I probably threw over 200 pitches a day for three months straight. Tired arm? No problem. Warm up for five minutes and you're good to go.

Fuzzless tennis balls are great for fastballs. The roughed up ones made good breaking pitches. Like @Chef2, I can remember two specific swings that were so pure that I didn't even feel the ball connect with the bat. One was pulled high and deep to left and carried over the little kids swing set about 300 feet away (a reverse Reggie Jackson 1971 All-Star Game shot). The other was the only ball either one of us hit that landed on top of the church roof in center on the fly, a Mantle-esque 325 feet.

We still talk about our games at EV Free like it was yesterday. And my shoulder reminds me of it, too.

 

This made me smile. Thanks, man.

 

Also the Giants (only about 50 or so games max), with Gary Park of the Day-Glo tan. And, yes, Channel 2 in the Bay Area, a solid indie station at the time, now a Fox station.

 

During the heyday of tennis in the 1970s, we'd raid the trash cans and courts of the municipal tennis complex for balls that had been discarded. We probably had a dozen at any given time, so it kept us from having to constantly shag balls.

Other stupid/funny story tied into that: Behind the fence on the third base side was a house with a goat enclosure. So all balls that landed near the goat stayed there until we were done. Then one of us would climb the fence and try to distract the goat, who was royally pissed off by then, while the other hurriedly picked up whatever balls he could find. Sort of like a weird goat matador. Thankfully, neither one of us got butted but two suburban teenaged boys had no idea how to calm an angry goat.

 

Seems like the fair thing to do would be to make the pitcher who gave up the tater scale the fence and retrieve the ball.

 

I think I wrecked my arm throwing tennis balls as a kid. When I coach girl’s flag football now I basically flick the ball from my ear, 30 yards max.

Tennis balls were also critical for road hockey. We always seemed to be low on inventory, but the idea of getting new ones wasn’t an option.

Years later when I started playing proper tennis, I was stunned at the life cycle of a tennis ball.

 

There were so many whiffle balls in the gutters on my house that it began to affect drainage when they interacted with leaves.

 

Just about all my friends lived in bigger, nicer homes than our 1,300-sf (expanded from 850-sf) dollhouse, but WE had the biggest yard, complete with 30x30 basketball court. So we were almost always the hosts.

One corner of the court for the pitcher, the opposite corner for the batter. On or over the roof (or fence close by) is a home run. There was one part in left-center with no house and no fence. Best you can do is a double if you hit it there.

Biggest drawback? The kudzu behind the batter. Spent WAY too much of my youth searching for lost balls in kudzu.

 

In junior high we played the game of throwing tennis balls over our gym. It had a peaked roof so you had to get it over the peak. We also did a little Home Run Derby with those yellow orbs. Those fuckers flew for miles.

I might pay real money to see a real live MLB game played with nothing but regulation tennis balls.