Day 3: Backyard Baseball Manager
I documented my time as a manager of a Backyard Baseball team, and how it is the best computer game of our time.
We all have the one thing that we associate with our youth. Whether that be a sport, one particular special day or maybe even a video game, this association is one that sticks with us for the rest of our lives. Ironically enough my “thing” wasn’t Backyard Baseball. It was my fascination with the cartoon character Taz. The fascination became more of an emulation as I started to act like Taz, spinning around my house and yelling gibberish at my parents. After two months of failing to communicate properly I needed to attend a speech class for a couple of years. It eventually ended up working out for me, I guess.
Backyard Baseball may not have been able to compete directly with Taz, but it came close (Not really. I freaking loved that guy). It was an amazing game that I was able to do with my brother that played the part of being a playstation replacement that we both wanted desperately. The game’s only shortcoming being that only one of us could play at a time.
****Hot Take Alert****
Backyard baseball is a better computer game than Oregon Trail. If you were able to read that sentence without your eyebrows burning off from that incredibly scorching take then you should continue.
2:50 P.M: I pull up to the library parking lot in a brand spanking new Honda Accord. My confidence is a bit higher than usual considering I upgraded from a 2002 Sienna Mini-Van to this piece of automobile sexiness.
2:54 P.M: Walk into the library like I’m the coolest person to ever set foot in the place. Doesn’t take long for me to set off an imaginary finger gun point at one of the women working the circulation desk for me to realize that I might need to turn it down a notch.
2:56 P.M: I trip. Hard. Stumbling but never falling. That is the Tom Rende way.
3:00 P.M: I talk to one of my librarian friends at the front desk for a little while, explaining my situation and the favor I need. She seems to understand the project and applauds me for returning to the library to do the only thing I was ever good at: Kicking ass and taking names in the greatest computer game in the history of mankind.
3:03 P.M: The computers do not have the game.
3:04 P.M: Chaos is about to ensue.
3:05 P.M: Chaos in a children’s section of a library stemmed from kids is much different than the internal chaos that swirls in the head of a 22-year-old who has just had his heart torn by the heartless computer updates that have erased the game from the hard drives.
3:06 P.M: I check for myself in desperation, hoping that my connection with this particular computer will override any reasonable thinking that this computer still has the game. As I frantically check I grill the librarian on who has done this terrible act of deleting this game.
3:10 P.M: I rush out of the library a bit less cool and confident than when I walked in. I might have had tears rushing down my face and a little girl may have laughed at me, but that is neither here nor there.
3:11 P.M: Have you ever smelled a new car and cried simultaneously? Well I can now cross that off of my bucket list.
3:30 P.M: I lie in my bed, crank Third Eye Blind, close my eyes, and let their music take me to the dark, depressed place I need to feel.
3:31 P.M: Peter walks in the room.
Hey Tom. I need to ask you something?
I’m really not in the mood.
It’ll just take a second.
What do you want from me?
Do I look tan?
Peter is naked.
3:45 P.M: I realize that maybe I can salvage my day by somehow figuring out a way to get it on my computer even though the games that I own haven’t work on my Mac up to this point. I come to this website called cespedesfamilybbq, which is hilarious and fantastic if you haven’t looked it up before.
3:46 P.M: They share my love of Backyard Baseball! They can help me get Backyard Baseball on my computer! They have rankings of all the players!
4:00 P.M: I start searching through my room for the CD that my boss gave me once I left working at the library to go away to college 5 years earlier. It’s the exact version I played while at the library and it is somewhere within my room, but with no exact location I’m forced to rummage through memories.
4:05 P.M: And I found my high school yearbook. This should be fun…
4:10 P.M: Oh god. I used to have a lot more friends. They probably stopped hanging out with me when I started obsessing over children computer games.
4:23 P.M: I found a haiku that my favorite teacher wrote for me…
4:30 P.M: The game was behind my boombox, and things nearly got a bit crazy when I found my Space Jam CD in it. We nearly had a one-hour setback.
4:50 P.M: I load the software and pray that it works. My luck in downloading programs and having them work is about 13% so I really am not expecting this to go over well, especially since the version I have isn’t the exact one they said would work on the YouTube video.
4:51 P.M: It’s getting a bit hot in here. Pressure is building just a bit.
4:52 P.M: The program officially downloads and I transfer the backyard baseball files onto it. My palms are beginning to sweat. The stakes are raised.
5:00 P.M: Sweet baby Jesus it worked.
5:01 P.M: I can hear that beautiful clubhouse music playing and I know it won’t be long before I get the pleasure of seeing Pablo Sanchez blasting homeruns over the centerfielder’s head.
5:03 P.M: There is a sense of euphoria I am currently feeling right now that just can’t be explained by other vices. Some people need cocaine and others use molly to get them the high they need. If you give me my current life with Backyard Baseball in it, I’ll take it any day of the week.
5:10 P.M: The music is ten times better than any music you’ll find in an elevator. God, Humongous Entertainment just knows how to keep it classy.
5:15 P.M: I choose the league play option and am now forced to choose a name for my team and for me as the manager. I’ve always wanted the luxury of choosing my own name. Don’t get me wrong. Tom is a perfect name for me, but I always kind of wanted the decision to be mine
5:18 P.M: I decided that my name should be HOF. Short for Hall of Fame. Holla at ya boy.
I opted with Super Duper Melonheads for my name because when in rome…
5:25 P.M: People are constantly criticizing the lineup and roster I choose for a variety of reasons. They think I don’t use the right pitcher, that my position use is suspect, my lineup doesn’t have any consistency, and that I don’t put my players in a position to succeed. To that I say hogwash. I have a dynamite lineup with quality players who make the best Backyard Baseball team with their combination of speed and power.
5:28 P.M: It is key to differentiate the managing of a major league baseball roster to a Backyard Baseball one. Yes, it is easy to say that you should split your lineup of lefties and righties or try to put speed at the top of your order, but the complexities of the Backyard Baseball world prevent you from doing such things.
Speed absolutely kills in the game as groundballs in the infield will almost always put pressure on the defenders to make a key play at first base. That goes both ways, though. Groundballs take such awkward bounces that it is imperative to have infielders who are quick and have strong arms to throw across the diamond.
5:32 P.M: Play ball! This is a rush I haven’t felt in some time.
My first at bat with Pete Wheeler shows my rust. I’m behind the fastball and way out in front of the breaking ball, which is probably the biggest reason for why I should have taken some type of batting practice before this.
5:33 P.M: Every at bat with Pablo Sanchez must be taken advantage of since he is by far my favorite player on the team. Everybody knows when you have ‘that’ guy on your teams you expect big results. That’s why an average of under .700 will not do.
5:34 P.M: Pablo popped out to the left fielder.
5:43 P.M: I love this game with all my heart but I have a list of things that thoroughly confuse, and infuriate me.
1. Why do the base runners leave the base after an infielder catches a fly ball?
2. Why do they bump into each other nearly every time there’s a flyball?
3. Why do they fall down so often?
4. Why, after you get an out, do you HAVE to throw the ball back to the pitcher on the mound for the game to continue?
5. Why do they spike the ball so often?
6. How do balls that land in fair territory get called foul when they roll past the fence? Shouldn’t that be a ground-rule double?
5:45 P.M: Manipulating the opposing team on the base paths is only mildly fun. If they get a single you can usually convince them to go to second by stalling in the outfield with the ball. One throw over to the second baseman and they are out by a mile.
5:46 P.M: Jocinda Smith rips a single to the left side of the field for my first hit of the afternoon. Thanks to her lack of speed it is paramount to pull the ball with her since it is all too common for players to get thrown out at first if they are slow and hit it to the right side of the field.
5:47 P.M: The position of ‘manager’ is a very odd one. It is a combo of controlling the players, choosing different managerial methods and rooting for them. Weird.
5:49 P.M: I try to argue with the umpire, but it doesn’t take me more than a few seconds to realize there is no umpire on the field. You only hear the ball and strike calls from the broadcasters. Are the umpires really robots?
5:50 P.M: Pablo is up with a couple of runners on and here is the call from Sunny Day:
“Pablo drives one to deep right center. This ball is OUT OF HERE!”
“That dog will hunt.”
I still don’t know what that means, Vinnie “The Gooch”.
The ball was hit 497 feet. I’m really not sure how a child does this with a wooden bat.
5:53 P.M: Pete Wheeler lost a bit of juice when pitching so I had to bring in Pablo for a relief outing. He allows a home run that might be the finest form of bull s*** that I’ve ever seen. The ball traveled only 133 feet. These are the first runs I’ve allowed in years.
5:54 P.M: WHY IS ACHMED KAHN PLAYING THE GUITAR WHILE THE OPPOSING TEAM IS TROTTING THE BASES?
6:07 P.M: Dinner is ready. Have to fuel up on some chicken parm.
6:41 P.M: Done with dinner and ready to hit bombs with the middle of the lineup. Mikey Thomas nearly hits a home run but it goes off the wall for a long single. Kiesha Phillips follows by inside outing a pitch over the right field fence for a home run. These are the fundamentals we teach at Tom Rende’s School of Excellence.
6:44 P.M: Dimitri Petrovich was a complete mistake of a pick. I should have picked Amir Kahn, Ricky Johnson or Kenny Kawaguchi because they at least would make for more decent entertainment than the bottom heavy Dimitri.
Petrovich steps up by hitting a crazy pitch for a single. Some may be wondering, what’s the significance of hitting a crazy pitch?
When a pitcher strikes you out they get to unlock a special pitch that becomes very difficult to hit. There are a variety of different pitches that you can unlock, one of which is the crazy pitch. By reaching base when hitting this particular pitch you get a humungous advantage that enhances your batting for one-three swings. The power-up either gives you:
1. Aluminum bat: This allows your player the opportunity to hit a bomb of a home run if they make contact with the ball.
2. Screaming Line Drive: The ball usually is hit very hard to the outfield wall, which is good for an extra-base hit if you have a speedy runner.
3. Under Grounder: When contact is made the ball shoots into the ground and pops up somewhere in the outfield. This gives you the chance of it being a ground rule double if it hops over the fence.
4. Crazy Bunt: The worst of all of the choices because it is just a hit that turns the ball into this mystical wonder that moves unexpectedly around the field. The problem is that since the ball moves so randomly it can land into a player’s glove and get you out.
6:47 P.M: I eventually get Luanne Lui to bat and she hits a screaming line drive for a home run after I unlocked the power up from hitting another crazy pitch.
6:52 P.M: That enabled me to unlock the Aluminum Bat, the prized power-up that doesn’t often come your way. Stephanie Morgan was up at the dish and proceeded to swing and…miss the next two pitches! A waste. I knew I never liked her.
6:55 P.M: Morgan crushes a ball deep to the outfield and eventually came in to score on an inside-the-park home run. She may be my second favorite player.
7:05 P.M: The game mercifully ends with the Super Duper Melonheads winning by a score of 20–2. This is an average game for me.
Adjustments are key for a manager and I would have to make several throughout the season. One was changing the lineup order a bit and the outfield. Some of the players came up and asked me to play different positions, and several parents got so annoyed that they threatened to take their son off the team (It was Kahn’s mother).
There were so many highlights throughout the season that it would be hard to narrow it down to just a few. Here are some of the memorable ones:
1. Pablo Sanchez’s home run that bounced off the outfielder’s head to go over the wall.
2. Pete Wheeler’s sixth no-hitter.
3. Wheeler hitting a game-winning home run in the top of the sixth inning in a matchup where I struggled to score any runs.
4. Mikey Thomas hitting a ball 597 feet.
5. Winning the championship.
What we realize when we bring back a large part of our past is how much things have changed from that point to now. A game that once consumed my life did the same temporarily for me during this short time frame.
Playing Backyard Baseball at the library was something that just started out to get the attention of others, but that quickly changed when kids would talk to me and ask for help, wanting to play the same game as that tall librarian worker. I constantly question the little I do for this world, typically pursuing selfish interests that just further my own gain, but during that time I felt I was truly making a difference. Maybe this is a reminder that I should start embracing that feeling.
