Striker to the Line: Yet another motivational speech

from Mark "Hutch" Lungariello

You hear some crazy and empty words of encouragement “at the dish.” Last Sunday, in the middle of what turned out to be a three game sweep, I dug in at at the striker's line. The Orators bench, discouraged from our cold bats, remained quiet. That is, except for Jay “Papi” Ortiz.

“Come on Mark, nice knees,” he said. “Nice knees.”

Every ballist has weird things going through their head while at the plate. And every one of them knows that thinking is the worst thing for an at-bat. The stranger the things swimming around in your noggin, the stranger that at-bat could be and the more important it is to clear your mind. I was thinking about how my knees looked .

Why is Papi telling me I have nice knees? A weird thing to say anyway, much less when I’m trying to get on base. Were they sexy? Should I tell him “thanks” or is that weird to carry on while I’m waiting for a pitch to be delivered by the hurler?

Or maybe Papi was being sarcastic - maybe my knees are deformed, too sharp, too small, too large, too bony. Had I put on enough weight since last season that my knees were showing extra pounds? Were my knees looking morbidly obese? Nice knees. Nice knees. Nice knees.

“Don’t think, that only does damage,” I told myself. And I was right. Last time I spent any time thinking about something was Friday and by 5 a.m. Saturday morning I found myself down 80 bucks and driving back from Foxwoods casino. Team Captain Matt "Howitzer" Lungariello suggests singing a song to clear your head while hitting, so i tried that. I cut myself off after a few bars of INXS's "I Kneed you Tonight." Ok, maybe I am trying too hard with that one but speaking of...

I realized Papi wasn’t telling me I had nice knees, he was saying “nice and easy.” You know as in “don’t try to do too much” “don’t try to crush it” – those kind of cliché things we tend to yell at batters especially in a game where you’re offense is sinking face. Well that made sense. But, it was too late, I had already hit an “on the bound” out to Newtown’s shortstop. On the sad jog back to the bench, I checked how my knees looked anyway.

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Sunday was one of those days for the Orators I guess. One of those confused and awkward “nice knees” days as I will call them from now on.

There was a time last year, our first year as a team, where we had a lot of nice knees days. But with a year of the vintage game behind us and some new guys on the squad we all hoped for the most part we had left that perennial losers thing behind. So, it was a disappointing result for some. By the end, people were calling for a do-over, their thoughts turning to other things like the score of the modern games going on. (I must digress as I just remembered the vintage joke of the day - CRANK: Do you know the score of the Yankees game? BALLIST: And just who are these Yankees?) Moving on…

I don’t look at this weekend as all bad. Sure we’re 1-4 to start off 2008, but come on we’re already one game better than we were last year. We also had some highlights. Remember, Cap hit the team's first homerun of the season. Mike Bielawa hurled his lil' heart out to a complete game victory... of course he did that while hurling for Newtown and against us, but let's not overthink that either. Thinking only gets in the way of fun. This is why kids generally don't like studying.

And besides:

A) By losing three games in the second week of the season we’ve gotten the first losing streak of the year out of the way.

B) We don’t have the added stress of trying to go undefeated on the year.

C) We’ve set up Act I of a good underdog story for the season.

A team down in the dumps, turns around and surprises everyone. These things always turn out to have a happy Hollywood ending. I’m sure some Orator will get the girl (or dude – note the vintage league don’t ask don’t tell policy), we’ll win the championship and somehow learn a valuable lesson about friendship, honesty and integrity. If we’re sober enough to remember the moral is a different story.

I even have a good last line for the film - just think of it, “Gentleman” Ben Fortney, fresh off his 2007 ankle injury is walking again and without crutches. I can hear him now. “God bless us, everyone!”