On the baseball team at Bucknell, we had a pitcher, John, who threw ninety miles per hour and when he was “on”, he was very good. John had an eccentric personality and sometimes seemed “off.” Having your best pitcher not have “both cleats on the rubber” can be a blessing or a curse. John and I had a great relationship. We were playing Villanova and Gary Scott, who later had a long career with the Chicago Cubs, was killing us. Late in the game, John threw three balls and was behind in the count 3-0 to Gary. I called time out and walked over to the mound to calm him down. I asked him what was wrong, and he said “I can’t get this guy out.” I said, “hey listen, it is already 3-0 and there is a good chance you are going to walk him anyway. Why not hit him in the head?” I was totally kidding and was trying to make him laugh and calm down. I went back to my position. John came to the stretch and threw the next pitch right at his head. He then turned to me and gave me the “thumbs up” sign.
Needless to say my emotional intelligence was off that day. Since we are on the baseball diamond:
When I was in high school in central New Jersey, I was heavily recruited to play baseball in college including by Princeton. The coach of Princeton was a grey-haired icon by the name of Tom O’Connell who coached Princeton for 17 years until he retired in 1998. Coach O’Connell had quite a temper. He had recruited me and was disappointed when I decided to go to Bucknell. As a coincidence, Bucknell and Princeton played each other each of the four years I was in school. Before each game, Coach O’Connell and I would have a nice chat and he would remind me of the mistake I had made not going to Princeton. When I was a senior, we played a long game at Bucknell. We had beaten up their pitchers and were leading by more than ten runs late in the game. This infuriated Coach O’Connell. We were in the 9th inning and it was clear that Princeton was going to lose the game. Nonetheless, every time someone on our team would get a hit, he would change pitchers. Not only would he change pitchers, but he would put in a position player to pitch. While this is common in high school, in college, pitchers are specialists and only rarely do they play another position. Each time someone got a hit, he would summon someone from the field to come in and pitch. This would take tons of time and even his team was getting tired of it and was looking forward to the four hour ride back to Princeton. In the 9th inning, I was up. I hit a double and was standing on second base. As expected, he walked out to the mound and pointed to his right fielder to come in and pitch. I was bullshitting with the shortstop and he said that Coach O’Connell did this all the time. When the right fielder started running in from the outfield to take his warm-up pitches, I figured that I knew Coach and half kiddingly said to him “hey coach, why don’t you pitch?” To my surprise, he started sprinting—or the eighty-year-old version of sprinting—from the mound toward me on second base. Had it not been for his shortstop, I would have gotten my ass kicked by an octogenarian—and probably deserved it.
I never said I got it right all the time.