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Hot to Trot with No Place to Go
by Rick
Reilly
Posted: Tue May 5, 1998
You know
why kids don't play baseball anymore? Because they took
down the
fences.
It's the era of the dread multiuse field. Every kid's
diamond now has to share its centerfield with three other
fields and a tai chi class. This way, come spring and fall,
the park can be turned into (cough, hack, spit) soccer
fields.
What fun is baseball without a fence? Without a fence you
can't hit a
real home run, and without a real home run you can't do the
home run trot, which is one of the last truly American
joys.
I love the home run trot. The longer, the better. Did you
see Rickey Henderson's home run trot the other night in
Baltimore? You could've washed and waxed a 1973 Plymouth
Barracuda in the time it took him to get around the bases.
Henderson turns a home
run into an HBO special. First, he pulls at his jersey. Then
he slaps his helmet. Twice. Then he hip-hops in the box a
few times, and, finally, he takes off on his epic journey,
going so wide around first and third that he nearly steps
in both dugouts.
Generally, Henderson gets around the bases just a hair faster
than a man laying
sod.
Pete Rose used to fly around the bases as though he had a
pot of soup boiling over somewhere. Occasionally he'd touch
a bag, but he
wasn't a stickler about it. Frank Robinson told him,
"Kid, you better leave those homers to those of us who
can act them
out."
Mickey Mantle always ran with his head down in shame, as if
he were eight years old and had just put one through a
stained glass window. Babe Ruth ran with little mincing
steps, as though he were trying not to step on cracks. Dave
Parker used to trot
with his fingers pointed like
pistols.
Right now is a great time to be alive if
you're hot for trots, on account
of sluggers are hitting home runs every three minutes. Mark
McGwire is on pace to hit 311 this year.
McGwire has a very humble trot, but he does the coolest
thing before he starts: The instant he connects, he flips
the bat away, end over end, like a
toothpick, as if to say, "Well, there's no use having
that around
anymore."
Just the idea of the trot is wonderful. Here a man is being
allowed to gallivant from one base to the next—real estate
that is fraught with peril and angst in every other moment
of the game—at his leisure! As he does this, the fielders
have to just
stand there, hands on hips, and watch, clench-jawed, as he mocks
them with his lazy left
turns.
You could retype Shakespeare's sonnets into Sanskrit in the
time it takes Barry Bonds to get around, yet he's still
faster than Oscar Gamble was. One day Ken Griffey Sr. was
in the New York Yankees' clubhouse in Minnesota when
teammate Gamble smashed
one
out. Griffey dashed out of the clubhouse, around a corner and
down a tunnel, figuring he'd get to home plate just as
Gamble was crossing it. Except when Griffey got to the top
step of the dugout, Gamble was still waiting for the bat
boy to come get his bat.
Why
rush?
Great trotters are men of courage because they know they
might get an earful of cowhide next time up. Yet they carry
on. Jeffrey (Hackman) Leonard let his left arm hang limp
and leaned toward the pitcher as he ran, like some disabled
Cessna. Reggie
Jackson would pose long enough to strike a decent oil
painting.
The trot is part of the game's very fabric. Remember the
look on the face of the
death-threatened Hank Aaron when the two fans caught up to him
between second and third on
number 715? Remember Jimmy Piersall going around
backward on his 100th? Do you realize the greatest home run trot
ever was done on one leg—Kirk Gibson's, after his heroic
pinch-hit 1988 Series shocker against the Oakland
A's?
Look, baseball is a game of simple pleasures. I coach a
team in the Catholic Youth League, and when one of my kids
slams a huge one, he
doesn't get the glory of a trot. He sprints madly around
the bases in case the kid in left has somehow grown a
catapult for a right arm and can throw him out from some lady's
purse on Field
Number 14.
Please, Mr. Parks and Rec Director, if you love baseball,
fence us in. Home runs and childhood are over way too
soon.
Tell us what you think. Sound off on the CNN/SI Message Boards.
Past Editions of Life of Reilly
photograph by Robert Beck
Issue date: May 11, 1998
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