Backyard Baseball Journal - sydrogerdavid's Blog

sydrogerdavid's Blog

Backyard Baseball Journal

Posted on March 22, 2013 at 08:36 PM.

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I am responding to the survey of backyard baseball diamonds that was included in Chapter Two of our book.

1. City and state were the backyard field was located?

2. Approximately what years the field was used?

3. What did you use for bases?

4. What were the ground rules?

5. Did you use �invisible� runners?

6. Briefly describe your memories of playing in this backyard diamond.

I have had three backyard baseball fields in my life time because I have lived at three different houses. For the sake of this paper though, I�m going to go with my second field.

1. Rolla, Missouri

2. 2002-2007

3. We used a set of plastic toy bases that my dad gave me for Christmas many years prior. The set included a plastic purple bat and an orange Nerf ball. It all came on a nice and neat plastic carrier that made it easy for hauling it all around. These bases were used for many years on my previous ball field in Dixon, which was much larger because our yard was much larger. The home plate had plastic bits that could slide around and keep track of the inning and score. We never used those features. I remember one time my dad ran over second base with the lawnmower, permanently scaring it to where one fourth of it was missing. By the time we moved into our second house, we found our field had a small tree stump right where second base would be located. We placed the base right in front. My father also used third base one year to launch fireworks off of one Independence Day. That base was scorched with black marks for the rest of time as well.

4. There were so many ground rules with this field; it would take too long to list them all. The most notable ground rule was that our house was the left field wall, creating a Fenway Park-like experience, and a ball hit on, or over the roof of our house was a home run. The batter had to run around the house and chase the ball down the street if it sailed over the house. The best part was that the house could only have been about 100 or fewer feet from home plate. Our offensive numbers skyrocketed! In addition to the Blue Monster, there was a huge walnut tree just behind the base path in right field. The trunk of the tree served as the second baseman. If the ball hit the trunk, you were out. The branches served as the wind, knocking down quite a few homeruns to right field. As it goes, my brother was a left handed hitter, I was a right handed hitter. Like Stan Musial, he learned to subconsciously hit the ball to left field. The branches also served a very useful purpose as shade from the sun and shelter from the rain. Another feature we had at our stadium was an ivy-like plant growth in center field. It may have been ivy for all I know, but we used the same rules they do at Wrigley Field. If the fielder is unable to easily retrieve the ball from the ivy, it�s a ground rule double.

5. We most definitely used invisible runners. Most of the
time, it was just my brother and I playing on that field. We also had to use invisible fielders. We would decide on questionable calls as to the fielding ability of the player playing that position in real life. Needless to say, a shot between the third baseman and shortstop was almost always fielded cleanly whenever I chose to use my greatest Cardinals of all time lineup. Ozzie Smith along with Scott Rolen would be unstoppable in real life too.

6. You may be asking what equipment we used. Well, we used our normal gloves, plastic baseballs, and wooden bats that we had received from Bat Day at Busch Stadium. We had attended Jim Edmonds Bat Day in 2001 and Tino Martinez Bat Day in 2002. So we had four bats to choose from. I would go so far as to use the correct color bat that each specific player would use since both sets of bats were different colors. I would use the black bat for guys like Jim Edmonds, Edgar Renteria, and Tony Womack while I used the natural bat for guys like Mark McGwire, Scott Rolen, or Mike Matheny.