By Kim J. Harmon

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  here is no crying in baseball - I don’t know if you can consider that an old adage or anything – since no one but Tom Hanks may have ever said it and that was in a movie – but someone said it and there is no crying in baseball has become just about as ubiquitous as walk-off home run.

It’s true, though, like when it’s Junior Griffey at the plate and the bags are loaded and he strikes out with the game on the line, no one is going to want to see him cry . . . not when he is going to go back in the clubhouse, have a lobster roll sandwich and tip the clubhouse man $200 for spit-shining his new loafers.

But when it’s some 10- or 11- or 12-year-old kid and he just got pegged at the plate by a country mile or whiffed with two ducks on the pond or gave up a towering home run that brought rain, then I guess there is crying in baseball.

Heck, that’s alright, though.

Hey, did anyone hear the transmission screaming in pain right there as, speeding along, I popped that sucker into reverse?

 

A couple of years ago, I wrote a column about crying in baseball and how I hated seeing it . . . even on a 10-year-old kid. I can’t honestly remember what the heck I was thinking, but I think my argument was that a crying kid was a kid who was giving up.

Sorry, I was 33 or 34 back then. A young buck. Didn’t know nothin’ about nothin’. But having a seven-year-old kid – who has been known to cry after giving up a tape measure home run to his old man in a game of backyard Wiffle© ball – can open a guy’s eyes, let me tell you. I can understand the kids, I think, and I know that fanning on three pitches with a runner on third in a tie game can be a tough thing to swallow . . . much like a forkful of asparagus, if I am permitted such an analogy.

You know, back when kids just grabbed their mitts and bats and ran over to the park for a pick-up game, no one cried. A kid lets a ball go through his legs, the other guys will kid him about it, they all laugh, and then the kid says, “Yeah, try and hit it by me this time, loser.”

But slap a uniform, a cap, and some cleats on a kid and then take him all the way up to South Meriden, for crying out loud, and that changes everything. This is no pickup game. Suddenly the game means a whole lot more.

It’s pressure, man. I can feel it. I know my son would love to play basketball (that’s his sport), and I tried to talk him into playing last winter, but he decided not to and I know it’s because of confidence: he is a little bit afraid of not being good enough, of failing.

Basketball is different, though. So is football.

Baseball – heck, baseball is all about failing. That’s what I tell my son every time we pick up the bat and the ball. Sure, you can get your hits and your home runs and score a whole bunch of runs, but I know I’m still gonna get you out more times than you get a hit off of me. It’s that simple.

I mean, consider the case of Ty Cobb. Now, Ty Cobb is the greatest hitter the game has ever known, with the highest career batting average (.367) of anyone who ever played, and still he got out more times than he got a hit. Out of every 100 times he stepped up to the plate, he struck out, popped out, grounded out, or fouled out 63 times. Sure, he got 37 hits, but he got out 63 times. He failed nearly twice as much as he succeeded and yet he is remembered as a fierce competitor and the game’s greatest hitter.

And how about Hugh Duffy, a 19th-century outfielder who batted .440 in 1894 for the Boston Beaneaters? That is the highest single-season average ever recorded (although Rogers Hornsby’s .424 in 1924 is the accepted record) and he still got out more times that he got on base. He had unbelievable 237 hits, but his opponents still managed to get him out 302 times.

He was a 19th-century superstar for failing at his job more than half the time.

I mean, JEEZ.

A kid gets struck out, he has to learn how to want to get back up to the plate and make the pitcher strike him out again. A kid who drops a ball in the field has got to want the next one hit to him so he can make the play. A kid who gives up a hard double has to want that ball back so he can get the next kid out.

But I realize now that a little crying is okay. Shoot, I cried when I fell asleep listening to the final inning of the 1978 World Series – and my team won!

The kids will learn, too . . . learn that sometimes it’s not a bad swing but a great pitch or not a bad pitch but a great hit.

That is the kind of stuff that makes the game of baseball so great.