The Wierdest thing you have seen in a game??

One in the same East.

 

no wonder

we're playing a team in our conference, who traditionally is not very good. well they hit the field for pregame and their coach starts hitting them balls. almost everyone in our dugout immediately look around at each other with the same "is he really hitting crosshanded?" look on our face. their coach is serisously hitting crosshanded.

THEN....later in the year we go to their place. different coach is getting ready to hit infield. we all kind of chuckle about how they must have made the crosshander stay in the dugout. the new coach starts hitting if/of and sure enough...crosshanded.



another fun one from the same place. we get to their park and ask if we can take bp on the field before the game. they say sure, we're not going to hit but you can. so i'm like, wheres the L screen. they guy looks at me like i'm speaking sandscrit. to make a long story short i had to throw pregame bp behind one of those softball screens with the big hole in them. classic

 

Pregame infield

Reading the post from LegionPost46 about pregame infield reminded me of my oldest son's middle school team. When he was just a 7th grader, they actually had a pretty good team, but the coach was a math teacher who I later figured out he hadn't been to too many baseball games in his time. I had never seen much of what was going on in practice, so I was sort of surprised (and embarrassed for the boys) to see the coach struggle just to hit infield at the first couple ballgames. The coach would literally toss the ball, and then swing and miss several times, and when he did hit it, Lord knows where it was going. Well I don't know who or when something was said, but I noticed after just a handful of games, that the starting pitcher would hit the pregame infield. No kidding, as I said they had a good team, so every game the rest of the year you would see the starting pitcher out there hitting infield/outfield before each game, then the pitcher would run over to the sideline and throw a few pitches to his catcher to warmup, and they would be ready to go. That team had talent, they only lost one game all year, in spite of the coach.

 

I have two quick stories:

1. I believe I know what school that Southern and Coach27 are talking about. Here is another good one from them: In between innings in a game at our field we were playing music. All of a sudden a song came on that their players obviously liked. That is when every player in the field dropped their gloves and started dancing (including the pitcher and catcher). The umpire signaled the press box to cut off the music so we could get the inning underway.

2. When I was JV coach here at RR years back we were playing our last non-conference game of the season (about game 8 of the year). We were trailing 13-0 after 3 innings of play so I emptied my bench. In the 4th inning a kid who was getting his first AB of the year(he hadn't even hit the ball out of the infield in BP) comes to the plate with the bases loaded and we are still trailing 13-0. The first pitch he sees all year he parks over the leftcenter field fence for a grand slam. That obviously sparked something. We won the game 25-15 in 5 innings.

 

Here's one i had forgotten about. Paw Creek is playing at Shelby in the American Legion playoffs around 1996-1997.

Bottom of the 9th, tie game, two outs, full count on the Shelby batter. Coach for Paw Creek calls time, goes to the mound and calls for a pitcher from the bullpen. Reliever comes in, throws one pitch ( ball 4 ).

Game over, season over for Paw Creek.

 

My Contribution to the Thread

I guess my contribution would have to be a 15 Inning game I played in one night in the Midwest League in Wisconsin Rapids in 1982. It was cold at game time. Probably about 35 or 40 degrees. By the 15th Inning (with the score 0-0) it was in the TEENS!

There was even a "freezing rain" delay around the 7th or 8th Inning. At 2:15AM there wasn't a sole left in the ballpark except for our radio announcer (broadcasting back to Appleton) and the bus driver. It felt like something out of the old TV show The Twilight Zone!

In the top of the 15th one of our guys walked and was sacrificed into scoring position. I proceeded to hit a 6 hopper over the bag at 3B that their Third Baseman was too frozen to get to and we finally took a 1-0 lead. Everyone gave me a standing ovation! Including the Wiskey Rapids Twins players!

They went down easily in the bottom of the 15th but I can only imagine what would have happened if they had tied the game 1-1?

To make this story even more bizzare, the next night they beat us 19-0 and hit two Grand Slam Home Runs in the bottom of the 1st Inning! Go Figure.................

 

My contribution is about an Area 3 legion game between South Rowan and Mocksville/Davie.

It had rained nearly all day and I was sure that the game would be cancelled, but after not hearing one way or the other my wife and I decided to head out to Rich Park anyway. When we got there, moments before scheduled game time, we were told that the game WOULD be played but it would be delayed until the field was made playable. When I saw the field I said "No way". It was a lake, but everybody there chipped in and by about 9:00 the field was declared playable. Instead of a lake it was now a swampy quagmire. The game proceeded pretty much like most legion games, surprisingly with very few, if any, errors from either team until the bottom of the 8th. By now a very heavy fog had settled over the field to the point I could barely see the outfielders on the field. Up till then it had been pretty much all South Rowan with them leading 16-8. In the bottom of the 8th Mocksville/Davie scored 16 runs thanks to some poor pitching and timely hitting including 2 grand slam HRs by M/D. Everybody in the stands figured the game was over and most left given that it was after midnight by then, only a few of the steadfast parents remained. In the top of the 9th, unbelievably, South Rowan scored 16 runs to retake the lead at 32-24. When they finally retired to the field for the bottom of the 9th they brought in their #1 pitcher to close the game and he managed to get 3 outs with the bases loaded to end the game. It was 2:00 AM before I left the field that night. It was one of the most amazing games I had ever seen. Folks around Rowan County (and I'm sure Davie County) still talk about today.

 

Many years ago - probably in the mid 70's - I was watching my older brother playing for Hickory Post 48. Hickory had a strong team and I believe they were playing Forest City. Hickory started rallying and the Forest City coach came out to make a pitching change.

He brought in a left hander off the bench to face our lefty hitter. After an out, a right handed hitter was next. So, the pitcher takes his glove off his right hand and moves it to his left. Now, he's a righty! He proceeds to switch back and forth the rest of the game.

I honestly can't remember how effective he was, but it was something I've never forgotten - or ever seen since!

 

One of the earlier posts reminded me of this. Three summers ago (wow time flies) I was playing my first summer for the Chatham A's of the Cape Cod Baseball League and Andrew Miller was my teammate there as well. One night, he faced a right handed hitter (he is left handed) and hit him with three straight pitches and struck him out. First pitch slider, right in the chest as he tried to bunt. Second pitch on his back knee swinging. And the third pitch back in the chest swinging again. We were laughing about it last year and he told me that that was his single greatest accomplishment in college... he put that on top of his Roger Clemens Award.

 

Playing a middle school game against Hamlet at their place. The batter for our team hits a ball straight up into the air and it drifts back behind the fence. A parent for the other team was walking behind the fence when the ball was hit. He looks up at the ball and seems to see it and so he put his head down. Right as he put his head down, the ball hits him right on top of the head. Wasn't funny at the time but he was taken to the hospital and is doing fine of course. But looking back it was one of the funniest things i've ever seen.


Randy Johnson hitting that bird with a 96 MPH fastball in the spring training game has to rate up there too.