It's hard to write about your own errors. I do that here because I'm our team scribe and facts are facts.

I also do so well after our game in part because it took me a while to figure this one out. Hopefully, my discoveries will be of use to all the defenders out there.

So then: My two, and only two, thank heavens, outfield errors led to three or four runs, in the first-place Yankees 6-1 victory over the third-place Americans
on Monday, June 12th, at the A Diamond. The game started out on a fairly clear night but became a cool, windy, overcast one, a weather change, I found,
that played directly into my errors.

I realized as I thought about those two errors, that they have value. Each was a teacher for me. Which makes me laugh in a way. I think: I still need
a teacher after playing 30 years in adult ball? Well, it does seem so.

(The Tom Hanks line, likely written by screenwriter Babaloo Mandell, applies: "The game is hard. People love it because it's hard." That doesn't mean
that the game doesn't come with stingers.)

First, let's celebrate some good play. The game featured three innings of taut, no-runs-allowed pitching from starters John Weber for the Yanks and
Scott Ross for the visiting Americans. Without the scorebook here, memory says that each pitcher gave up maybe two hits over those innings.
John, a righty, kept changing speeds and pitches while nipping at the plate's corners while Scott, a lefty, threw some very quick, nasty sliders.

Those innings also included some smart defense at first by Americans Jim Porter and Vinny Koster, who were alternating at the spot.
Each snared all kinds of hard, wayward hits by a Yanks lineup that has about five lefty hitters. Revise that: Five good lefty hitters,
who can send screamers to the right side of the field.

An example of that was the hit that the Yanks Ted Poleto slammed in the sixth inning, when the score was already 6-1. Ted's shot
to right was one of the hardest liners I've ever seen or heard hit. It stayed on a six- or eight-feet high path close to the first base line and
flew a fair distance into right, going as if it had a charge in it. Again, without the book, I don't know if Ted got a single, double or triple.
The thing was the hit itself: it was loud, fast, on a rising line. It turned heads.

A similar hit belonged to my teammate Vinny Koster, who has been swinging a heated bat all season. In the fourth, he hit a long fly ball
to left center for a double. He eventually made it around home with the help of teammates for the Americans brief 1-0 lead.

Now for the hard but instructive part. In the bottom of the fourth, with two outs and with bases jammed or two on, and
the score either 1-1( or 1-0 us) reliever Jim Konstantakis, faced the Yanks long-ball hitting catcher Pete Geanellis.

So, to my first error: Pete socked a very high fly ball toward right center that initially looked as if would almost fall somewhere between Scott,
who'd moved to center, and me in right.

Except there was something puzzling about that hit. It was going way up, maybe 100 feet or more, but not so far out toward the outfield.
Where was this baby headed?

When the ball reached its high point, it dropped almost straight down. I'd expected it to travel maybe 100 feet into right center. I was headed that way
when I saw the ball look as if it had put on five pounds and it just fell. It hit the ground some twenty feet past second and then it bounced in odd ways.

I've written about the bounce at the A diamond before. So a quick heads up again, to defenders playing on the cement- and tar-based floor there.
I've found that the first bounce of any ball at the A can be really high, more so than on a grass field, but the second and subsequent ones can
be really small, as if the ball suddenly loses most of its energy. And each bounce can go in odd, squirrely directions. It's as if each bounce
doesn't follow the other or (my sense of) physics.

Which is what happened with Pete's hit. By the time I'd chased down the ball, the two or three runners, who had taken off with the hit, had scored. So that's a stinger.

In the fifth, that same mysterious flight path happened again, this time, just to me. I'd moved to left field. The Yanks had a runner on second when
Craig Miller, who'd replaced John Weber as the Yanks pitcher, hit a towering fly ball, much like Pete's, but higher if possible, one of the highest
I've ever seen, maybe 140, or 150 feet up. It was something.

Like Pete's, it also had almost no parabola, no parabolic arc. When I saw the ball falling, I thought at first it was going to the left field foul line
and then suddenly it seemed to switch directions and go spinning to its right, and my left, toward center.

Instantly, I realized I'd seen that kind of rise and fall before: While pitching, catching and playing the corner spots over the years. A batter
would hit a ball up, not far from the plate, and then, depending on the ball's spin and the wind, the ball's downward flight can send it anywhere,
forward, backward, sideways with odd, screwy twists where infielders often make last-second guesses and dives trying to snare the ball.

So, that's what I was seeing, but farther from home than I'd ever witnessed it, about 90 feet into left, and higher. The question was where would
the ball come down?

I had about two seconds to guess right. As the ball neared me, I saw some corkscrew spin and guessed to my left. I made a quick step that way
and stuck out my glove. I needed a few inches more. The ball bounced off the end of my glove and another run scored.

Over the past week I've been thinking about those plays and wondering what happened? Mysteries both, but not, I think, anymore.

First, neither hit had, as I said, much of an arc before its drop. Almost no parabola. It was straight up and almost straight down.

So why? Why didnt each keep going outward?

Yesterday, it came to me: I remembered that as I was running back to the dugout after the fifth inning I felt a strong wind at my back. I thought that had to be it:
each ball hit a wall of wind that was flowing in, over the outfield walls, starting, I'm guessing about the fourth inning. The wind was a big buffer, and it
stopped the balls in its path, sending them almost straight down.

The interesting twist here was that the wind wasn't much there at game's start. As most players know, weather conditions can change fast at the Schenectady
diamonds.

I knew, or thought I knew, of the outfield conditions on Monday because before the game, my teammates and I took a longer than usual outfield practice. It was a pleasure.

We're lucky to have three of the best fungo fly ball hitters I've ever practiced with in Jim Konstantakis, Jesse Braverman and Mike Kane. Jim and Jesse, who were
hitting to us on that night, have honed their fine fungo skills coaching high school teams.

Nearly all of their pre-game hits had nice parabolic arcs to them. Which meant we could practice catching the rising, falling and forward flights of their hits, backing up
or going in the right distances to make catches depending on the balls' arcs. Few of their hits, maybe none, went straight down.

And I'm guessing that their fungoes took those nice curving trips because stronger incoming winds hadn't yet assembled and wouldn't, for another hour or so,
around the fourth inning.

The fateful fourth.

That doesn't mean I didn't leave the field kicking myself. But it does mean that in the future, every inning, I'll be a wind-checker. I also keep in mind that fly balls
can take unexpected paths, and so keep every part of me, from my eyes to my toes, loose, ready for big changes at the last second.

There, that's done. Good catches, everyone.


-Mike





-- Edited by mikehart on Wednesday 21st of June 2023 01:59:29 AM