One of the more exciting plays in baseball is the diving catch. Many people would agree that it's a play that can fire up the entire team. But, if you miss the ball, unless the hit directed you towards a backup, then the runner is likely to get a lot of extra bases as a result.
Ever since I started playing college baseball, I really worked at improving my diving abilities, until I was easily the best player on the team at diving- getting parallel off the ground and full extension, coming down with the ball. But even with diving in practice a lot, I haven't gotten to dive much in games. Seeing an SMCC player make a great full extension dive, getting into the air to catch a ball when it would have been the go ahead hit if he let it drop, and possibly three runs if he missed it, makes me realize the guts it takes to do that. It was a ball down the right field line, so he had no backup.
All I can do is hope to be in that position someday. It's all a a matter of chance and luck to be in that position to begin with. The few diving catches I have gotten have been strange though.
In spite of diving a lot in practice, I never really had the opportunity in games. One reason would be that despite playing outfield a good bit, I pretty much never had the ball hit to me. The joke for the coaches was to put me wherever they didn't want the ball to be hit.
Then, in an all star game when I was ten, the ball was hit to me in the air when I was in centerfield, and I caught it. It was the first time I had caught a fly ball in a game. Then a ball was hit into the left center field gap by a lefty. It went for a double. In the next to last inning, I was in left field, with the tying and go ahead runners on second and third with two outs. And after being out of the game after hitting the double, the lefty came back in for his second at bat. And I knew he was hitting it the same spot he did the last one. I took several steps in, though not too many, since I didn't want to get burned over my head. But he hit it exactly where I expected it, a line drive to shallow left center where he had hit the last one. I charged it and made a diving catch.
Those were the only two catches of fly balls that I had in little league. So the diving opportunities were lacking. Then I played junior league, senior league, college. The hitters actually consistently hit the ball to the outfield. I stopped counting how many fly balls I had caught. When I was at third base, I dove in foul territory and caught one. While pitching, I dove and caught a popup, then my glove side elbow hit the ground when I landed, and the ball popped up in the air. After rolling over, I looked up, and caught the ball with my bare hand as it came down.
There's nothing more fun than diving, even in practice. And it's been a while since I've had one in a game. Hopefully that wait won't last much longer.
This seems to me to be more of an autobiographical slice ("Me and the Diving Catch") than a childhood memoir, though it certainly extends from the present back to your past as a child. The key graf is the second from last, the all star game catch. That expanded might have given this more of a memoirish flavor, though I'm not sure how you could have expanded or extended a diving catch.
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