verdugo288

By the time 1992 rolled around, “The General” and I had coached together for SIX seasons.  “Wait a minute!!!” you say…”92 was our third year, Gee.”  Yes, you’re right….easy does it….it’s just that “The General” and I had coached for three seasons in Colt League before we took the Legion Team.  So we had six seasons together.  And one thing for sure had been missing all of those years.

Yes-sir-ree, The General and I had coached together for quite a few seasons.  And we would always complain about ONE thing.  EVERY SEASON we would say it, sometimes even in games.  Sometimes even in front of players.  And it had gotten to the point that we no longer cared who heard our cries….our unanswered prayers.  You know what we were always bitching about?

The fact that we NEVER had a fucking shortstop!!!!

Never!  Not one time did any of the Teams we coached up until ’92 EVER have a bona fide shortstop.  We would drive home after games and I would ask rhetorically to the Gods out loud “when am I EVER going to get a god-damned shortstop?!???!?!?!”

In would chime  General as he looked up towards the Heavens in jest….”Yeah, what’s up with that?”

We were pissed about it and we wanted some answers!!!!  WHEN??????????  When will we EVER get a shortstop!!!!!

I’m not taking anything away from the guys we had before.  Chili was pretty close in ’90 to being a legitimate shortstop.  In fact, he was damn good.  But….he didn’t play but about 5-6 games for us that season at short.  He came back in ’91 and all he did for us was pitch.

Hell, the first Team I managed in ’85 WON the whole thing.  And we played the entire first-half of the season with a left-handed shortstop!!!!  WTF?!?!?!?

Something always went wrong with Me, General, and shortstops!!!!  We’d get a guy, he’d quit.  We’d WANT to get rid of a guy….and that guy would become our shortstop!!!!

And we had GREAT Teams through the years.  But we never had what I would consider to be a dominating shortstop.  It seemed as though it was never going to happen.  And we had proven we could win without one.  But we always dreamed that it sure would be nice, just for ONE season, to actually have a shortstop.

Sure, we always had someone who could PLAY shortstop.  But we never had a dominant shortstop.  The kind of guy who had a gun for an arm, the kind of guy who could go into the hole and fire a guy out, the kind of guy who could make every routine play look….well, ROUTINE!!!!   We just couldn’t find that guy to save our souls.  And we knew it.  And we were starting to become very vocal about it.  The cries were getting louder as each season went on.  It had almost become a joke.

Every ground ball hit towards our shortstop for the last six years of our lives had been a fricking adventure.  We never knew what the hell was gonna happen.

We even nicknamed Cal Frost “Clank!” in 1990 because I could have SWORN his glove had teflon coating on it!!!!  We loved the guy, too. By 1990, The General and I had pretty much resigned ourselves to the fact that we would NEVER have a shortstop.  So we never got too upset with whoever was playing that position for us.  We had actually grown pretty accustomed through the years that anytime a ground ball was hit to our shortstop….it was time to hold your breath and wait and see what happened!!!!  Really….it had gotten SO BAD that we were actually almost kind of OK with it.

Until 1992 came around. 

And our prayers were finally answered.  And we didn’t get just ONE….we got TWO!!!!

In fact, the entire 1992 and 1993 seasons had one thing in common.  We never had to worry about what was going to happen if a ball got hit to our shortstop ever again.