John Miller, head coach of the Brussels Kangaroos and a reporter for a major American newspaper, is chronicling his team’s 2008 season in a column that will appear every Monday on mister-baseball.com. It is the first of several Mister-Baseball Blogs this year.
No games this weekend, but the clock is ticking. The league wiped out the last 10 games, so we have six weeks left. We need to go 8-2 to finish in the top two and play in first division next year. When we’re not playing, there is much to follow in a wired age.
On my track list: Belgium’s Little League team (Website, 2-2 so far in round robin, with seven ‘Roos), the three-Kangaroo Belgian junior national team in Sweden (Champions! Website) and the (zero-Belgian) Baltimore Orioles (53-56, 12 games back, I’ll be happy with .500),
It’s been fun following the pre-teens in Kutno, Poland. The Little League Complex there is a dream. On the phone, I talk to Mike and Sam, coaching out there, and I hear the buzz of this small town dedicated to putting on a dozen professionally-organized ballgames every day, from the smooth cut grass to solid umpires and rock tunes. From 2002 to 2006, those were golden years, coaching my brothers and taking teams to tourneys every summer.
In 2008, on a cool, breezy Sunday afternoon in early August, my favorite blond and I rode bicycles along the Meuse, a winding river in southern Belgium. We put the machines in the back of our restaurant delivery truck. (She runs a pasta lunch spot.)
We then drove to her mother’s house, a country garden two-storey at the top of a hill. There was spontaneous supper, chicken, taters and green beans. Kid in-laws hid in corners.
Behind the bicycles, in the back of the yellow van, I had squirreled away balls, gloves and a bat. In less than an hour, a pick-up ballgame was decorating the lawn, starring Brian, my wife’s spectacled nine-year-old half-brother.
It’s impossible to write about such scenes while avoiding high moon candy prose. But here is a fact: Baseball bit me in a backyard in 1985. I was seven. We were on vacation at my grandparents on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. My uncle Jimmy set up a make-believe contest. I hit a game-winning homerun.
The memory serves when I coach kids. Turn a practice into a series of mini-high pressure world series moments, and you’ll have a gaggle of excited, motivated kids. Easier said than done, though, in a culture with no baseball literacy. I couldn’t tell Brian: “Ok, bases loaded, two outs, bottom of the ninth.”
So we played catch, there was no magic, and his mom called him in. We packed and drove home. Dad came over. While my wife read, the men watched some of the 1970 World Series, via mlb.com’s Baseball’s Best page.
“Look at how skinny Belanger was.”
“Is that Johnny Bench?”
“Frank hit the ball so hard.”
Pat Corales grounded out to Brooks Robinson, and the Orioles were World Champions.
That, too, keeps me coming back.
Will the Orioles ever win again? Could Josh Beckett win a Belgian second division game pitching from his knees? There is mystery in the world, few answers, and only one way to write to oldworldpastime@gmail.com