A Bit Weird — Baseball Bench Coach

About thirty years ago, I began my career as a manager. After years of playing baseball and softball, it was time to hang up the cleats and shape the careers of some future players. You see, I was tabbed by another father to manage my eight year-old daughter’s softball team. The girls named the team the “Grand Slammers” (although I don’t recall anyone on the team actually hitting one that summer). I taught the Grand Slammers how to play the game, yet I probably learned more from them. They taught me that fastpitch softball can be a lot of fun. The girls chanted songs when their teammates were batting, and even had a couple taunts when their opponents were at the plate. I enjoyed every moment of my rookie year on the top step of that dugout (or should I say, at the end of the bench).

I thought of my Grand Slammers this past week when one of the feature stories in baseball news concerned the Savannah Bananas, a baseball team in the Coastal Plain League that has quite a lot of fun themselves. Unfortunately, one of their players, 75-year old former MLB pitcher Bill Lee, went into cardiac arrest while warming up in the bullpen. Due to the fast action of first responders at the scene, Lee survived and is doing fine. What’s interesting though is that many of those who were attending the sold out game first thought it was just another entertaining act put on by the Bananas.

The Bananas are famous for showing their fans a good time at the old ballpark. Among their antics is the “Banana Baby” where each home game begins by wrapping a baby in a banana outfit and raising the baby to the sky, ala Simba. There’s a long waitlist for moms (and prospective moms) to include their kid in the pre-game tradition. The Bananas have sold out all of their home games since 2016, their first year in Savannah. Their story has gone national, featured in separate pieces by ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and even the Wall Street Journal.

The Bananas’ founder, franchise owner Jesse Cole, prides the organization on reinventing the game of baseball. The visiting teams to Grayson Stadium in Savannah have to play by the Bananas’ rules. A couple of the rules, that no new inning may start after 1 hour and fifty minutes, and that managers and catchers cannot visit the pitcher’s mound, go to the core of what’s wrong in baseball today. MLB games last well over three hours and drive away the younger fans from the sport.

Some of the other Banana rules are for entertainment purposes only, such as: (1) any foul ball caught by a fan is an out: (2) batters can steal first base on any passed ball or wild pitch; (3) and in extra innings the defense gets only a skeleton crew comprised of a pitcher, catcher, and one fielder. Interestingly, you don’t win a game at the Savannah ballpark by total runs scored, but rather each team gets a point for each inning the team wins, kind of like match play in tennis. Seems like the Banana rules are a bit weird, but everyone clearly has fun.

A couple former MLB pitchers come to mind who were also a bit weird and played by their own rules. Mark Fidrych, nicknamed “The Bird”, pitched for the Tigers in his five-year career (1976-1980). The Bird’s rookie season captured the attention of everyone in baseball. Not only did he lead the major leagues with a 2.34 ERA, finish the year with a 19-9 record, and win the 1976 AL Rookie of the Year Award, but he had fun doing it. Among other things, Fidrych talked to the baseball, carefully groomed (or patted down) the mound before each inning, and refused to let groundskeepers come near his mound during the game in fear they would be entering his sacred ground. Detroit fans swarmed to the ballpark to see his act, averaging 33,649 fans during his starts in 1976 compared to only 13,843 when another Tigers pitcher got the start. Due to a “dead arm” that he first experienced in 1977, his career was short-lived.

Bill Lee, a pitcher for the Red Sox (1969-1978) and Expos (1979-1982), displayed a lot of fun antics as well, so much so that he garnered the nickname “Spaceman”. Off the field he was famous for his unfiltered comments to the press, such as advocating population control. He once called out an umpire for missing a call during a World Series game, and asked the fans to write letters to the MLB Commissioner demanding that the game be replayed. On the field Lee popularized the “Leephus pitch”, a variation of the “Euphus pitch”, an extremely slow pitched ball with an arcing trajectory. After his MLB career, Lee continued to pitch in every league that would take him. He actually pitched in a game for the Brockton Rox in the Canadian-American Association of Baseball at the age of 63, the oldest pitcher who ever appeared in a professional game. Lee joined the Bananas earlier this year and hopes to play again next year.

Lee’s most notorious “Leephus” pitch happened to be the turning point of the seventh game of the 1975 World Series between the Reds and the Red Sox. The Red Sox led 3-0 going into the sixth inning of Game 7 behind Lee’s masterful pitching. With a runner on base, Tony Perez hit a “Leephus” far into the night and over the Green Monster at Fenway Park, sparking the Reds to a comeback 4-3 win and World Series Championship. There weren’t many Boston fans amused by Lee’s weirdness that night.

One of my joys in parenting had to be taking my daughters to minor league baseball games. We traveled through the Midwest not just to find good baseball, but to experience the between innings gimmicks and prizes. I remember attending a game with my Grand Slammer in Peoria, IL, one summer night in 1996, and seeing her perform “YMCA” with a peanut sales vendor. It’s always good to have fun at the old ballpark, even if sometimes it’s a bit weird.

Until October,

your Baseball Bench Coach

P.S. Your Coach will be away from the keyboard in September, returning in October for an MLB playoffs preview.