SAGE ADVICE: Covering all the childhood bases

By MARK SAGE/Columnist

He sometimes – OK most times – doesn’t know when to run. And when he’s on second forget it. He isn’t running till the runner formerly on first surprises him. And they surprise him every time. On first and third, the base coaches can usually get him moving with a gentle push. But he can rope the ball at the plate, even if he sometimes forgets if he’s a lefty or a righty. (He’s a righty, I think, but his brother bats left and throws right, which ratchets up the general level of confusion).
Out in the field he gets in his position, the classic hands on knees at ready, and doesn’t move, even when the ball rolls past, nearly under his glove. If the gods of baseball wanted him to field it, he figures, it would have charity-hopped up into his glove – the new freshly oiled and recently bound and shoved beneath a heavy chair one.
I don’t watch him run, though. Or get in his fielding position. That’s not what I’m there for, not yet. I’m there to watch his face as he runs, while he waits in the fielding position. That’s my only job. And what a rewarding one it is. Asked to describe it, about the best I could come up with is that it’s childhood. Pure childhood.
This is my youngest’s first year playing tee ball. His big brother wasn’t entirely thrilled about having him on the team.
“I don’t know if he can hit,” he told me the day of the first practice. “Or catch. Or throw.”
I was dumb for a beat or two. He hadn’t worried that last year, his first as an Oriole, would be spent not knowing how to hit, or catch or throw. He didn’t express concerns about other teammates. And then I had my “aha” moment. Not that I could do anything with it. I couldn’t ease his worries about his younger brother. I couldn’t explain to his satisfaction that it would be fine or fun or pure childhood. I couldn’t do much of anything except tell him to walk it off.
It’s not the last time you’ll get hit with the ball, I didn’t say.
Turns out his little brother could hit, even if he sometimes forgets to run. He can catch, too, as long as you throw the ball right into the webbing of his mitt and scream “Squeeze, squeeze” at the top of your lungs. And he can throw, though he nor you nor anyone else around can accurately predict where that throw might go. And it turns out big brother isn’t really so jealous after all. It’s kind of fun having a little brother on the team – as long as he doesn’t show you up. He even offered to share his old jersey – the Mark Belanger one – now that he’d gotten a new, Brady Anderson flavored one.
He asked about Anderson, and I told him almost all I knew. The 50-home run season. The 50-steal season. The friendship with Cal Ripken Jr. I left out the part about the sideburns.
My youngest ended up with a retired number. There’s only a handful of those in Orioles history. The Robinsons, Brooks and Frank, Ripken, Eddie Murray, Jim Palmer and Earl Weaver.
Weaver was the only one of the bunch who wasn’t technically a player. He’d spent a dozen years in the minors, but he never took an at-bat with the O’s. But from 1968 to 1982, he was the Orioles. He’s the reason, I’d argue, the birds won seven AL East titles, five AL pennants and two World Series rings, counting the ones they won in 1983, still Weaver’s team even if he was already in Florida or somewhere.
It’s kind of fitting that my youngest wears Weaver’s number.
So far he’s refrained from kicking dirt up on any umpires. But once he starts running from second to third at the right time, look out. Anything’s possible.
Contact Mark Sage at 228-6611 or .