Many seasons ago I was dragged into service by a softball team I’d never heard of to play a position I’d never played.
It went poorly. For the second time in my life I was afflicted with a case of the Yips, a malady I’d previously experienced when I was 12.
The Yips are well known in sports, mostly baseball, and have plagued many players, both well known and semi-anonymous, throughout the game’s history. Steve Sax, All-Star second baseman for the Dodgers, once caught a dose of the Yips that lasted weeks.
Steve Blass, a Pirate right-hander who was the star of the 1979 World Series, returned the following year and brought with him a severe case of the Yips; he soon retired.
The Yips are a mental/psychological aberration that strike without warning and produce an inability to perform routine physical tasks, usually throwing. My first experience came at a most unfortunate time in my life, because it was 1960 and I was a ballboy at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland.
There was nothing I wanted to do more than impress my Cleveland Indian heroes with my skills, of which they were probably well aware, thanks to my outstanding career with the Seven Hills (OH) Little League team.
On a warm September night, my first as a ballboy, I spent batting practice in left field picking up grounders and snatching a pop fly or two.
When what to my wondering eyes should appear emerging from the Cleveland dugout and heading for the outfield but centerfielder Jimmy Piersall. Jimmy Piersall was the finest baseball player in history according to calculations I’d made at age 12. But wait—was he trotting toward me?
“Hey kid! Wanna play catch?” he said, jogging by. Me? Play catch with Jimmy Piersall?!? A few seconds later we were loping off, side-by-side, to deep centerfield in wonderful Municipal Stadium in beautiful Cleveland, Ohio.
But we weren’t alone. The Yips came too.
We stood about 75 feet apart and Jimmy tossed a ball that snapped squarely into my glove. I threw it back, but my ever-reliable throwing arm suddenly felt like a flopping foreign appendage. It sailed over his head; he reached up, caught it and threw the ball back.
I bounced my next throw three feet in front of him. My right elbow felt tightly attached to my ribcage with fishing line; I was devastated. Not once did I return a throw accurately; I should have tried kicking the ball to him.
Our session was mercifully brief but later, in the clubhouse, Jimmy Piersall draped his arm across my shoulders and told fellow players the nicest lie anyone has ever said about me: “This kid here has a better arm than half the guys on the team.”
THE YIPS, PART II
So there I was at the softball field behind Juvenile Hall, filling in at shortstop for a team and in a league for which I was not a member. I recall a few teammates.
Dave Nelson, in pinwheel baseball cap, was in left, Dan Hamburg somewhere else in the outfield. Tony-somebody was at third, and over on first stood southpaw J. Holden. I think Tim Husted was catcher, and a guy I didn’t know sat on the bench as Designated Smoker. Play Ball!
My memory is that the Yips didn’t arrive at the park until about the fourth or fifth inning, because if I’d been throwing erratically from the start of the game my teammates would have dragged me behind the dugout and shot me.
Regardless, at some point an opposing hitter slapped a friendly two-hopper to short, I fielded it flawlessly and launched the ball about 10 feet over Holden’s head at first. I knew immediately I had the Yips and could only hope it wasn’t obvious to our opponents. Ha. Everyone at any ballpark can quickly smell the Yips.
So the next 14 hitters, or 40, aimed ground balls to short, and I proceeded to turn those would-be outs into a hundred or so runs for the visitors. Thinking back I don’t know why Holden didn’t use a garbage can lid for a mitt, or why the manager didn’t utilize a defensive alignment with four or five fielders backing up first base.
When Giants catcher Johnnie Rabb came down with the Yips he was nicknamed “Rainbow” for the trajectory of his throws to second. Four time Gold Glove second baseman Chuck Knoblauch got the Yips and couldn’t fling a ball a measly 75 feet to first base. Pitcher Rick Ankiel, in the National League Playoffs, threw five wild pitches in one inning and was soon reborn an outfielder.
I take comfort it those examples, because otherwise I’d be in a mental institution.
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