(#24)
I got moved to catcher during the fall of my junior year at Forest Hill in 1971.
Coach Perry said it was because I was such a good glove at second base and he really needed me behind the plate to handle all of the wild pitchers we had, but I really think it was because all the other catchers played football. He also had one of his little favorites who moved in from out-of-state and he was going to play second base. It certainly wasn’t going to be me.
Coach put in a drill that we did about once a week, called the Run Over the Catcher Drill. “Moose” called it the Kill Clarke Drill.
The idea was to put all the runners at second or third base and one at a time he would have them run over the catcher… me. Their job was to run full speed and try to take my head off any way they could. And if they didn’t, they would have to run laps around the lagoon. The lagoon behind the baseball field was the only reason we had indoor plumbing at FH.
If they tried to take it easy on me, we would all have to run around the lagoon.
So when it came to killing me or running around the lagoon until dark, the choice was simple.
The fun part was how Coach threw the baseball to me just about the time the runner was arriving at the plate. It always seemed a little sadistic to me, but everything we did seemed a little sadistic, especially running around that stinking lagoon. “Mooseistic” was the term I used. More on “Sadomooseism” in other editions of Moose Tales.
This was long before MLB, colleges, and high schools put in what Coach would call the “Sissy Rule” (of course, he would say it in different way) where the runner cannot make contact with the catcher in order to protect the catcher from injury and the catcher could not block the plate without the ball, either.
Needless to say, the Sissy Rule was not in effect at the daily boot camp we called Forest Hill Baseball in the early 70s and Coach didn’t seem to care if I got hurt or not. “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger,” he’d say. I hated that quote. This is just one of the reasons my parents never came to watch my practices (or games).
From what I could remember after a few concussions, blood, bumps and bruises, was that I took some pretty good licks from my “friends,” but I finally got smart and started side stepping them and making them miss me and roll, or hitting them before they could hit me, or hitting them where it hurt. So what if we had to run around the lagoon for me doing it.
I used my mitt as a shield, kind of like a running back face guarding the players trying to kill him. I would try to keep them at arms length, so to speak, to soften the blow.
But the better I got at avoiding the collisions, the later Coach “Mooseolini” would throw the ball. Sometimes they would run over me and then he would throw the ball. He seemed to enjoy that.
I got where I could handle just about everything they could throw at me every time we ran the drill, except from one person… Dwight Hampton.
Dwight was a wild-eyed, crazy senior and he was bigger, faster, and stronger than most of the players on the team, especially me. He seemed to get great pleasure from inflicting pain on me.
And when I would side step him and make him miss and roll past home plate, he would get back up and start running back and run over me from the other direction.
I finally just learned to take it, but only from him. I figured he was going to get his licks in at home plate, in the dressing room, or at school the next day, so I thought I would just go ahead and get it over with on the field.
And I couldn’t wait until spring came when Stan Cliburn would join in on the fun.
But we never did the Run Over the Catcher Drill in the spring.
Stan said, “I never heard of it.” 🙂
Rick Clarke's Diary of a Mad Baseball Coach 