I don't play baseball. I have never played a real game of baseball
but that didn't stop me from pitching a perfect game in RBI baseball
with a sidearm pitcher named Bret Saberhagan. In the game he has an
awesome sidearm pitch that was just about impossible for that poor 16
bit processor to keep up with. I was over visiting my Attaway cousins when I preformed this feat of vicarious
baseball prowess. I was so excited about all things baseball that somehow I got it
into my head to lie about my own real life baseball skills to my
baseball all-state cousin and his mother. They we sitting on the couch with me and I began to weave fantastical tales of my baseball glory and heroics. As you might have
guessed the amount of baseball knowledge I had gleaned from the
Nintendo game was not enough to fool the actual baseball players for
long. Or more accurately, at all. I told them that I had once been caught in a pinch play. They
had never heard of that because it is not real and so instead of
saying just kidding and backing out there I tried to firm up my
position by describing what a pinch play was. I told them it was when
a runner was pinched between a ball carrier and a defender on base
and forced out and made a pinching motion with my thumb and
fore-finger to illustrate the principle of the pinch. To their credit
they were polite but I am pretty sure they knew I had never played
baseball and that they were even more certain that the play I described was
not really part of the game unless you were an un-athletic nerd who
just pitched a perfect game on RBI baseball got excited and tried to
tell a story. They let it go and never brought it up again. Good for them, good for me.
