Sunday, June 6, 2010

BloggeRhythms 6/6/2010

Same old story lately, not a lot in the news. BP’s pipe in the Gulf is still pumping out zillions of barrels of oil a day, and now the stuff’s coming ashore. So, if you’re having fish from the Gulf for dinner, at least you won’t have to grease the pan.

I was watching a movie yesterday and one of the stars was Dave Roberts. You probably know him as Tony. He’s played in several Woody Allen movies: Annie Hall, Radio Days, Stardust Memories, Hannah and Her Sisters, among others. The reason he’s of special interest to me is we grew up in the same general neighborhood, and when we were teens spent lot’s of time in Manhattan’s Central Park.

Now, that was quite a while ago and I’m not sure Dave would remember me, but I certainly remember him. He was a good sized guy as I recall, somewhere around six feet, and not heavy set, but had a decent physique and, if I remember correctly, wanted to be a major league pitcher.

Now, if you want to pitch seriously, you have to practice a lot, and you also need a catcher. As for me, I played lots of ball, but at first or third base or the outfield. Sitting on your haunches in a crouch wasn’t my idea of a good time at all. But, Dave seemed like a really nice guy the first time I ran into him in the park, and he asked if I wanted to throw the ball around for a while.

Well, I didn’t know he was an aspiring big-time pitcher and that his idea of tossing the ball around was that I squat down and let him throw countless fast balls to me. When I found out that’s what he wanted, I politely said “Gee, I don’t have a catcher’s mitt. Sorry.” His answer to that was not to worry, he’d brought one along himself. Then he handed it to me.

After he tossed a few burners in, still warming up, I told him I wasn’t sure I could keep doing this because my hand was starting to sting. I told him that next time I’d bring a sponge pad along, but for now I thought it best to quit. To that, he said that I shouldn’t worry; he’d brought a pad along too, which he happily leant me.

Then for the next I don’t know how many hours I crouched, squatted, and spent some time on my knees, catching fastballs, hard curves and sliders till Dave himself ran out of steam. When we parted that day we chatted for a while about really nothing much and he said he’d enjoyed it, and that maybe we’d run into each other again sometime.

In fact, we did run into each other at least a few more times, I don’t remember exactly how many, and did the same thing again. He pitched, I caught. But now, looking back on those days, and seeing what he’s become, I now realize that an award winning Hollywood and Broadway actor chose to spend a considerable amount of his time with me, from only sixty-feet and six inches away.

That’s it for today folks.

Adios

No comments:

Post a Comment