Imagine you are the coach for the other team. You’re up against Verdugo Hills. You probably are under the assumption that it’s just going to be another day at the ballpark. You are in your spot in the third base coaching box. You kind of take a look around the field, check out how many people are in the stands, maybe you look up in the sky and just kind of realize what a great day it is for a ballgame. You watch the Verdugo pitcher taking his warm-up tosses before the game starts. Then you make a huge mistake. You look over into the Verdugo dugout. At first you see several players and coaches who are seated. But the moment you looked in….one of those guys in the dugout stands up, takes a few steps towards you, looks you straight in the eye and says in a loud, gravelly voice “GET OUTTA MY DUGOUT!!!!!!!!!” And he keeps staring at you until you look away………..
The rest of the players and coaches in that Verdugo dugout are now RIGHT ON YOU…staring you down. You look away saying to yourself “Oh shit………..”
You can’t even believe what had just happened. But boy can you now “feel” the pressure. You might even hear a few comments about YOU as the game goes on. But you dare not make that mistake again. You have learned a lesson by now. And the lesson is that you will never, ever look into that dugout the rest of the game. Even though you don’t look in there again….you KNOW “they” are watching you. You are kind of in disbelief. You can’t believe that this is happening. You go over to your dugout after the inning is over and tell someone on your team about what happened. No one believes you. Then they try to look into the Verdugo dugout to prove you wrong. And then another Verdugo guy will hop up from his seated position, take a few steps towards that guy…point…stare him down and bark out “GET OUTTA MY DUGOUT!!!!!!!!!!!!” And stare that guy down until he looks away………….
It just kind of set the tone for the game. We had a unique way of letting the enemy know who the dominant alpha males were going to be for the remainder of the day. And we had you backpeddling from the onset of the game. You know it’s amazing how many times we did this to unsuspecting members of the opposition. Word got around the league…don’t even LOOK in their dugout. We didn’t care who it was. Coach, player, ump, parent, league official….it was real simple. Someone was ready to bark out “GET OUTTA MY DUGOUT!!!!!!!!!” at all times.
General started this back in 1990. There was this John Candy look-alike coaching the Lancaster team and he was just walking over to our dugout between innings like it was a frickin’ social event and all we wanted to do was get that loudmouth Del Griffith clone to shut his pie hole. For some reason…we never told him to “GET OUTTA MY DUGOUT!!!!!!!!!” Thanks to that dork and his fat mouth…General and I decided to never let anyone in our dugout again. And the players took quite a liking to it. What was funny was when we played the Lancaster team in 1992 and when he tried doing that shit again….we were all over him. We silenced him and kicked their asses on the field. He was in a daze the whole game. Instead of sitting there and listening to his drivel….we were calling him “Dewey Oxenberg” (John Candy’s role in the movie “Stripes”). After one look in our dugout…he, and the rest of the boys from Lancaster were done. He never even looked into our dugout again…………
You know…to this day I still find myself in situations where the words “GET OUTTA MY DUGOUT!!!!!!!” still apply. How about you?
verdugo288 