2003-02-18 - 9:35 p.m.
A LEAGUE OF SOMEONE ELSE�S
�You�ve got your gentlemen, and then you�ve got your men,� Peanuts Johnson said through my radio, describing time spent playing baseball in the Negro Leagues. The gentlemen didn�t need to be won over. The �men� were won over or at least neutralized by the 33-8 record. Mamie �Peanuts� Johnson, you see, was a girl�a girl who was extraordinarily good at pitching. She wasn�t the first but she was one of the very few. But, sadly perhaps, she was not a pioneer for no one much followed after. There was Peanuts and two others and that was it.
She had tried out for the professional women�s league but she was a particularly square peg. She was not only female but also African-American. She wasn�t the right type for the women and she wasn�t the right type for the men. But the Indianapolis Clowns were willing to take a chance on her. It probably helped that the Clowns had started out as the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball, depending on clowning and routines to woo a crowd. But as with the Harlem Globetrotters a gimmick was not enough. The gimmick had to be able to play and play well.
Playing in a men�s league is an interesting experience. I should know. I did it once, although it wasn�t much of a league. It was just a bunch of college kids with very ordinary abilities playing baseball games against other students in the same large dorm complex in a huge midwestern land-grant college. (Yes, mother, �moo.�) We had a co-ed team but hated the constricted rules of the co-ed league. We didn�t want to have to count how many people of each gender we had on the field. We didn�t want to have to limit how we could pitch or follow any one of several silly rules designed to make playing a �good and safe experience for the girls.� So we entered the men�s league.
We had a rule that everyone played at some point during the game. I got more playing time than I had anticipated because one of the guys figured out the ideal spot for me. I could catch reasonably well but could not throw over long distances. My reflexes were not particularly fast but I was already low to the ground. I could hit solidly and rarely struck out although I ran so badly that I had to hit what should have been doubles to get to first (and occasionally hit triples that got me to second.) I didn�t become a pitcher like Peanuts. Instead, I became one of our two catchers.
At first, I did not realize that there were gentlemen and men. Some guys may not have liked having women around but some of them can�t tolerate is having them play well. As we started to win, things got rough.
But Peanuts is absolutely correct. There are gentlemen and men. The gentlemen play the game as it is meant to be played. The men stuck out legs to trip, threw balls hard at heads (resulting in a broken cheekbone for one of our male players), and let bats accidentally slip from their hands. Oops. Catchers learn to hate the player who can�t hold on to the bat and catchers have reason.
But even the gentlemen lose their heads from time-to-time. Winning does something. As we made it into the league play-offs, something changed. Suddenly, the team wanted to win. Suddenly the gentleman closed rank and decided to go with what they believed to be the best players, which apparently included weak guys but not mediocre girls. They broke our rules�and there was no joy in Mudville.
But I was too much of a lady to remind them that I likely wouldn�t have struck out. And if it had happened to Peanuts, I�ll bet she�d have held her tongue too.
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LAST FIVE ENTRIES:
Evita
Everything I Need to Know About Homeland Security I Learned at the Seton Camp-Out
The Means
Class Warfare
An Ashford in Cahoots?
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Copyright 2006 by Ellen |
