What a tough loss for our Diamond Heels! The Carolina men’s baseball season ended with a whimper last Sunday in Boshamer Stadium. I never played at that high level of competition, but I remember the tears after a season-ending loss.
Much has changed in the game since I last played twenty-five years ago. There is the green safety base next to the regular first base. There’s a pitch clock. Players wear silly oven mitts when they run the bases. I sound like a curmudgeon. Don’t get me started on instant replay.
image via UNC Athletic Communications/Joe Bray
In my playing days, each of us bent our cap’s bill around a baseball and fastened it with rubber bands to form a permanent curve. Today’s players maintain such a straight bill that it appears as if they have ironed it. I wouldn’t be surprised if some have; style is important. Look at the eye black.
Styles change just as seasons end. A select few, like Luke Stevenson, will make millions playing this game at the next level. Most players will move on to something else. Maybe someday, just like my buddy, who pitched for a major university, one of these former Diamond Heels will come home from work and play catch with a neighborhood kid in the alley, throwing him pop flies and cheering when he manages a leaping, one-hand catch. Basketball, football, and possibly lacrosse will continue to gain popularity, and computers may eventually replace human umpires. However, baseball will persist in a recognizable form.
The gaping wound of last Sunday’s loss will heal into a scar, and the wonderful thing about scars is that they often make for a story. The former players will tell such stories in years to come. Maybe the kids will have gone back to bending the bills of their hats.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of the book with Wipf and Stock Publishers titled This Is the Day: A Year of Observing Unofficial Holidays about Ampersands, Bobbleheads, Buttons, Cousins, Hairball Awareness, Humbugs, Serendipity, Star Wars, Teenagers, Tenderness, Walking to School, Yo-Yos, and More. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where he is a student of joy.
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