No. 701 – Magic Bus

Performer: The Who

Songwriter: Pete Townshend

Original Release: Single, Magic Bus: The Who on Tour

Year: 1968

Definitive Version: Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970, 1996. The version from Live at Leeds is iconic, but I prefer this feedback-drenched, somewhat sloppy version that chugs out of nowhere at the end of Naked Eyes and dissolves into chaos when Townshend’s guitar quit on him at the end of an epic Who set.

At some point in the life of everyone who’s ever played baseball, there’s a moment when you realize you can’t play any more. For 99 percent of us, that time comes long before we reach the Major Leagues. My grand dream to be a big-league ballplayer died when I was 16, at about the time that this song was permanently burrowing its way into my brain via Jin’s copy of  Live at Leeds.

In retrospect, it’s crazy that I even thought that I might make the majors. I didn’t make nearly the commitment that was needed. You have no way of knowing that when you’re a kid. You just think you can show up, play, be better than everyone else, and eventually you work your way up. Of course, it doesn’t work that way.

You have to practice constantly, year-round. When I was a kid, no one wanted to play baseball when it was football season—and you couldn’t in the winter. The ones who still were playing were the guys who DID make the majors, as it would turn out. I didin’t put the time in, and when I started facing pitchers who threw unhittable curveballs I knew the game was over—to say nothing of the fastballs. That was in sophomore year of high school.

Although I hadn’t made the Hasting team in junior high, I was encouraged enough by my performance—and by the comments from guys who had made the team who told me they were surprised I didn’t make the team—to give it a shot again in High School. I knew I wasn’t going to make varsity, but JV was fine. You have to start somewhere.

Tryouts started in early March and involved several mornings of getting up at 5:30 to be there to practice in the gym before school started, but I did what I had to do, tried my hardest, and lo and behold, I survived all the cuts and made the team.

I then was given another lesson about baseball that I learned only in hindsight that would have been useful to me at the time: If you don’t think you can hit, you can’t.

I started the season on the bench, but I was hitting the ball well in practice. One time the coach set up a pitching machine and dialed it up to 90. No one was hitting the ball much, even the starters. I wasn’t hitting it with anything like authority, but I was hitting it forward.

From that moment on, I’d sit on the bench watching other guys slump and saying barely audibly: Put me in, I can hit. I said this over and over. Finally, the coach did call my name, and in my first high-school at bat, I hit a double. I hit a single the next time up.

After that I found myself in the starting lineup, and I stopped saying my mantra. I failed a few times, and guess what happened? I didn’t hit, and I soon was back on the bench to stay.

Still, it was a fun year. Road trips were particularly fun. We didn’t have a magic team bus, just a couple of vans that the coaches drove. Back then, Upper Arlington played in the Central Ohio League with teams that were all over the state: Lancaster, Zanesville, Newark and even Marietta, which is on the Ohio River. The only other area team was Grove City. (Now UA is in a Columbus-area league.)

Weekend road trips took all day, and weekday road trips typically meant an early departure from class. Being able to leave class early due to baseball was a badge of honor to me.

My most memorable events of that baseball season happened on road trips. The first time we tried to play Marietta. We got as far as Cambridge before turning around due to rain, but it was a long enough trip for me to catch what a few other guys had. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say I didn’t eat Wendy’s for another two years after that.

Another were a couple of games at our arch-rival Watterson, and I’ll definitely recount the details … another time.

And with that, 300 down, only 700 more to go.